For the first time in over a century, Parisians and tourists will be able to take a refreshing dip in the River Seine. The long-polluted waterway is finally opening up as a summertime swim spot following a 1.4 billion euro ($1.5 billion) cleanup project that made it suitable for Olympic competitions last year.
Three new swimming sites on the Paris riverbank will open on Saturday — one close to Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral, another near the Eiffel Tower and a third in eastern Paris.
Swimming in the Seine has been illegal since 1923, with a few exceptions, due to pollution and risks posed by river navigation. Taking a dip outside bathing areas is still banned for safety reasons.
I think it’s mediagenic enough that journalists and other organizations probably tried to do their own tests and found nothing suspicious that wasn’t officially announced.
By the Olympic Games 2024, the work to improve the infrastructure to prevent pollution already costed 1.4 billions of euros. I guess additional infrastructure for exceptional meteorological events was just too much to be justified.
If the water is tested every day of the opened swimming season, there’s no reason to worry.
That it won’t immediately kill you doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
Do you avoid every kind of nature swimming? What if the tests say that it is as clean as the river or sea you trusted to swim before?