The pollution of the Seine which deprived triathletes of swimming on Saturday and Sunday is undoubtedly due to the “malfunction of a valve” of the Parisian sanitation network, explained Tuesday August 22 the Town Hall of Paris, confirming information from the Canard enchaîné to be released on Wednesday.
“At this stage, the preferred hypothesis is that of the malfunction of a valve in the sewerage network located at the level of the Tolbiac bridge”, said the Town Hall.
It is this malfunction that probably led to a degraded water quality, beyond the bacteriological thresholds required for diving and swimming in the river in complete safety. The paratriathlon events on Saturday and the mixed relay on Sunday have been transformed into a duathlon.
“Investigations are continuing to understand the sequence of events and to determine the measures to be taken in order to guarantee the perfect quality of the water for the holding of the events in 2024”, added the Paris City Hall.
The dreaded heavy rain scenario
“It’s regrettable, but it’s a situation that we will be able to better understand in the future”, commented to Agence France Presse the deputy in charge of sport, the Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Seine, Pierre Rabadan, who is still awaiting the details of what precisely happened.
He did not hide the “lack of explanation” in the face of the results of the water analyzes and the presence of the bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) beyond the threshold set at 1,000 colony-forming units per 100 millilitres, in the absence of rain and thunderstorms in the French capital. About ten days earlier, it was storms and exceptional rainfall in Île-de-France that had compromised another sporting event: swimming in open water.
This scenario of heavy rains was feared by all the players and, with a view to the Games, several projects are underway to try to counter this risk, such as the Austerlitz basin, still under construction, which will make it possible to store storm water (50,000 cubic meters), and will be operational in 2024.
On the side of the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games, apart from perhaps providing a greater amplitude to stagger the events, there is no plan B planned for swimming elsewhere than in the Seine.
These competitions in the Seine are preludes to future swimming promised for 2025 by the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo (PS), on three sites while swimming has been prohibited there since 1923.