A few months ago, I spent a week in Paris with my mom and sister, visiting museums and exploring the city. One of the more exciting things we stumbled upon was the 2024 Summer Olympics countdown timer in the Place de la Concorde, which signaled 7 months until opening ceremonies - pretty cool to see!
As we read about the government’s plans to host events throughout the city, we discovered that they intend to use the Seine to host swimming events - a proposal our group found to be completely laughable. If you’ve seen the river in person, you’ll know exactly what I mean - it’s wide, full of current, and notorious for being the final landing place for the city’s sewer runoff - so it’s no surprise that swimming has been illegal since 1923.
Every time we crossed from the left bank to the right bank, we would have a chuckle about the city’s plans - I’m sure that one of us was snickering “how the hell are they gonna swim in there this summer!” as I took this photo, looking west towards the Eiffel Tower from the Alexander III Bridge.
With the Olympics now only 3 months away, it’s shocking to me that the city is still sticking to their plan to swim in the river - especially in light of some of the data put together by water safety advocates. The Surfrider Foundation has sampled the Seine at two central bridge points for the last six months and found that the river has consistently shown troubling amounts of E. Coli and Enterococci bacteria.
To show just how poor the water quality is, in a way that numbers on a page have a tough time conveying, I thought it was worth taking some time to build a data visualization of the results and benchmark levels. Take a look below!
Finally, I do want to note that I am not rooting against the City of Paris as they attempt to clean up the river for public use (an admirable goal) - I just think the stubbornness to not admit the river is unsuitable and that the government’s plans may not work out is so hilariously French that it had to be called out.