It was described as a high-stakes gamble, but in the end the Paris Olympics triathlon events took place with the swimming events in the newly clean-up Seine, albeit after the men's event was postponed for 24 hours due to poor water quality.
In total, the city has spent €1.4 billion on the clean-up, but this isn't just for the Olympics.
The long-term reason for cleaning up the Seine is so that locals can swim in it in the years to come.
History of filth
Swimming in the Seine has been banned since 1923, when public officials closed the waters off to would-be swimmers due to high pollution levels.
In the years since, the Seine, while known for its beauty as it traverses the city of Paris, is also reputed for being trash-ridden and dirty.
People have attempted to push for a Seine clean-up in the past - former French President Jacques Chirac said in 1990 that he hoped to clean up the water enough so that he would be able to swim in it within three years. This didn't happen.
A "water quality and swimming programme" was first launched in 2016 - funded by €1.4 billion from the City of Paris and other local authorities - and organisers of the Paris Olympics decided to hold open-water swimming events in the Seine, giving the project a firm deadline.
The clean-up was slow and painful - according to a Slate report in 2021, nearly 360 tonnes of waste were collected from the water each year while Time magazine, reported that "[In 2022], 1.9 million cubic metres of untreated wastewater was spewed into the Seine".
The main issue was that dumping the wastewater in the river was necessary "to avoid saturating Paris’ sewage network and flooding the city when especially heavy rain hits".
To address the issue of heavy rains pushing untreated waste water into the river, a huge rainwater storage tank near the Austerlitz train station was constructed.
Public swimming
Once the Olympics are over, the next stage is public swimming.
Despite the mayor of Paris herself going for a dip earlier this summer, members of the public will not be able to swim in the river until 2025.
The plan is to create 23 bathing sites along the Seine, with five in Paris itself and the rest in the suburbs and greater Paris area.
Two of the Paris sites will be located along the left bank of the Seine (in the 5th and 6th arrondissements), one at the edge of the Île Saint-Louis (4th), one at Port de Bercy (12th), and one in the Bois de Boulogne (16th).
These will be enclosed pool-type structures put into the river to create swimming spaces - similar to the temporary pool that is erected each year on the Canal Ourcq at Bassin de le Villette each summer (which regularly attracts more than 100,000 during its eight-week opening period).
At this stage it is not clear whether the Seine pools will be permanent or only for the summer, or what the rules will be on swimming in the river outside of the designated pool spaces.
It's unlikely that swimming along the length of the river will be allowed outside of organised events such as triathlons due to safety risks - the Seine is a busy river with an increasing amount of traffic. In addition to river taxis and tourist boats, the Seine is also used for freight traffic and this is something that city authorities are keen to encourage as more and more areas go vehicle-free.
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