Simply at some point after opening the River Seine to swimming for the primary time in over a century, French officers shut down the river attributable to considerations over air pollution following heavy rainfall.
Swimming within the Seine has largely been illegal since 1923 attributable to air pollution and different security dangers. The river was opened for public swimming Saturday in three particular designated areas.
The flip-flop follows an almost 1.4 billion-euro mission to scrub up the river within the lead-up to final 12 months’s Olympics. The river hosted a number of open-water occasions, together with the swimming leg of the triathlon. It was additionally the location of the video games’ opening ceremonies, with boats stuffed with athletes crusing by way of town.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo even took a swim previous to the Olympics to exhibit the water’s cleanliness to a skeptical public.
Officers had first aimed within the Nineteen Nineties to scrub up the river. The plan that ultimately acquired it achieved was proposed in 2015 and concerned upgrading Paris’ Nineteenth-century sewer system in order that households had been now not dumping wastewater instantly into the river. The town additionally constructed a reservoir to preserve rainwater and forestall the quantity of waste flowing into the river.
Nonetheless, the system is weak on wet days, a French official told Le Monde. That’s what occurred Sunday, with heavy rainfall elevating considerations about air pollution. Heavy rain additionally brought on a spike in micro organism through the Olympics, inflicting the triathlon to be postponed a day.
The river is examined day by day for E. coli and different dangerous micro organism.