Cleaning up the Seine: The Olympics Boosts a Parisian Dream, but It’s Still Far from Fully Achieved

 People swim in the Seine river after Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo swam in the river, Wednesday, July 17, 2024 in Paris, France. (AP)
People swim in the Seine river after Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo swam in the river, Wednesday, July 17, 2024 in Paris, France. (AP)
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Cleaning up the Seine: The Olympics Boosts a Parisian Dream, but It’s Still Far from Fully Achieved

 People swim in the Seine river after Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo swam in the river, Wednesday, July 17, 2024 in Paris, France. (AP)
People swim in the Seine river after Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo swam in the river, Wednesday, July 17, 2024 in Paris, France. (AP)

The Seine River has been one of the stars of the Olympics — whether as the scene of the ambitious opening ceremony or as the Games’ choice for the triathlon and marathon swimming competitions.

The challenges to featuring the famed Paris waterway so prominently were considerable. The work that went into tackling one of the largest — concerns about its water quality — could be the Games’ biggest legacy for the river snaking through the French capital and arguably for Paris itself.

Authorities vow that their 1.4 billion-euro ($1.5 billion) cleanup efforts will allow a river that was so polluted Parisians were banned from taking a dip in it for a century to finally open up as a summertime swim spot. They also hope a cleaner river revitalizes the overall environment. Some experts are skeptical, however, and the Olympics have shown there still remain some hurdles ahead.

Results of daily testing during the Games showed the Seine’s water was not always in line with acceptable guidelines for illness-causing bacteria such as E. coli. That canceled several test swims and postponed the men’s individual triathlon by a day. Better results later allowed Olympic events to take place.

French President Emmanuel Macron claimed victory following the Olympic triathlon tests, calling it “a fabulous legacy for the Paris region’s residents who will be able to swim in and for biodiversity.”

Bathing spots for all

For many Parisians, swimming in the Seine has been nothing but a dream.

In the 1970s, only three to four fish species were living in the Paris section of the river, with waters deeply polluted from industrial activity. Now, around 35 fish species may need to get used to sharing the Seine.

A swimming test open to the public has been scheduled for mid-September ahead of a city promise that anyone can take a dip starting next summer.

Paris officials have identified three potential bathing spots, one close to Notre Dame Cathedral, another near the Eiffel Tower and a third in eastern Paris.

It is dependent on water quality results falling in line with European rules.

In a warming world, the river could help people stay cool during increasingly frequent heat waves. However, rain storms can wash runoff and wastewater — and, therefore, bacteria — into the river, and climate change is making weather more extreme.

Since 2017, Parisians have been swimming during the summer in the Canal de l’Ourcq, in a northern part of the capital. By contrast with the Seine, water in the Canal de l’Ourcq has been consistently found to be of good quality over the past few years, according to analyses reviewed by the Regional Health Authority.

A challenging cleanup

To get the Seine to a swimmable state, authorities opened new disinfection units and created a huge storage basin meant to prevent as much bacteria-laden wastewater as possible from spilling directly into the Seine when it rains.

Officials also have targeted houseboats that used to empty their sewage directly into the Seine, requiring them to hook up to municipal sewer systems or lose their berth.

Recent efforts are heading in the right direction, yet they’re still insufficient to guarantee clean waters, said Michel Riottot, a health and environment expert at the France Nature Environnement group.

That’s because when sewage networks become saturated with rainwater — especially during storms — they still discharge surplus into the Seine, he said. Plus, when there is rain upstream in a region known for its grain farming, pesticides accumulate into waterways flowing into the Seine, Riottot added.

Some 23,000 homes upstream of Paris also are emptying their sewage into the rainwater system that flows directly into the river, Riottot said.

For the Olympics, only two indicators were being analyzed for Seine water quality: the fecal bacteria E. coli and enterococci.

“If you can find them at a higher level than legal thresholds, it means there are lots of other things that can sometimes be more dangerous than these two” in the water, Riottot said, such as COVID-19, hepatitis A and chemical pollution.

Ready to dive in

Still, the idea of swimming in the Paris landmark is irresistible to many.

An experienced open water swimmer, Sina Witte got enthusiastic when she and other members of her Parisian swim club were offered the chance to take a dip alongside Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo just before the Olympics.

“I really enjoyed it,” she said this week, spending about 45 minutes swimming down and up the river. She did not get sick afterward.

“I’m not racking my head too much about it — as soon as we can swim around, I’m going, it makes me happy,” Witte said.

She participated in a triathlon competition in the river in 2009, 2010 and 2011 — exceptions to the general ban on swimming there since 1923.

In 2010, participants received a warning that the river didn’t comply with water quality requirements. The E. coli levels were 2.5 times higher than required, according to a photo of the document seen by AP.

Witte remembered that thousands of people took part.

Olympics’ environmental efforts

Paris City Hall promised that “the whole ecosystem will benefit from this cleanup project.”

François Houix, Olympics project manager at the Voies Navigables de France, the body in charge of managing the country’s inland waterways network, said the Olympics helped broader efforts to improve how rivers and streams work.

A floating barrier set up upstream of the Olympic swimming site catches both green and plastic waste and other polluting items in the Seine, he said. The system will be extended after the Games.

State-sponsored benefits also urge boat companies to be greener, including a bonus when boat operators switch to electric engines. There will be about 40 electric boats operating in Paris by the end of the year, up from only one in 2018, Houix said.

The Games also prompted a 15-million-euro investment to reopen a branch of the Seine to boats in the disadvantaged northern suburbs of Paris. That’s because a main stream along the Olympic Village was closed for weeks for security reasons.

Local officials say that when boat traffic stops on weekends or later in the day during the summer, it will allow swimming, rowing and stand-up paddleboarding either on that reopened branch or on the main stream, Houix said.



Italy Oyster Farmers Dream of Pearls from Warming Mediterranean 

A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
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Italy Oyster Farmers Dream of Pearls from Warming Mediterranean 

A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 

Pearls may soon be cultivated in European seas for the first time ever, as Italian oyster farmers seek to exploit an unexpected opportunity offered by the rapidly warming Mediterranean.

In late 2023, the first specimens of Pinctada radiata, a pearl oyster native to the Red Sea, were spotted in the Gulf of Poets, a popular tourist area around 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Genoa on Italy's north-western coast.

Less than a year later, they are proliferating in what have always been some of the Mediterranean's coldest waters, more normally associated with other types of oyster used for food rather than jewellery.

"We are looking into the possibility of producing cultivated pearls here," said Paolo Varrella, the head of a cooperative that has been breeding food oysters in the area since 2011.

The group has already made contact with pearl oyster farmers in Mexico to get tips on production techniques, Varrella said.

"The Pinctada radiata has been reported in the Ionian Sea around the island of Sicily since the 1970s, but only in the last decade has it moved north" to the cooler Tyrrhenian and Ligurian seas that lap the western Italian mainland, said Salvatore Giacobbe, professor of ecology at the University of Messina.

It is the latest in a succession of alien warm-water species to enter the Mediterranean as it heats up due to climate change.

Manuela Falautano, a scientist at the Italian environmental research and protection institute ISPRA, said this trend had seen "an exponential increase" in the last decade.

Some of these species are aggressive and disrupt delicate ecosystems. In a few cases, such the spotted puffer fish and the scorpion fish, they are also dangerous to humans.

The 2.5 million square kilometer (970,000 square mile) expanse of water that separates southern Europe from Africa and the Middle East is heating up faster than the average of the world's seas, Falautano said.

BIG MONEY

Pearl production, more readily associated with Polynesian atolls than the northern Mediterranean, has an annual global turnover of 11 billion dollars, and Italian oyster farmers are keen to cash in.

Adriano Genisi, a pearl importer for more than 30 years, said the Radiata may produce gems similar to Japan's renowned "Akoya" pearls which have a diameter of 5-9 millimeters and a white color with shades of grey, pink and green.

If all goes well the first pearls could be harvested in about a year, he said.

The rising temperature of the Mediterranean is also blamed for an increase in violent storms such as the one that sank the luxury yacht of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch off Sicily last month, killing six passengers and the boat's cook.

Franco Reseghetti, a researcher at Italy's National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology, said measurements taken in the Tyrrhenian in December at depths of between 300 and 800 meters showed the highest temperatures since 2013, and he expected to see a further increase this year.

"The huge amount of energy behind this heating can act as a fuel for devastating atmospheric phenomena" such as the violent storm which appeared to have sunk the yacht off Sicily, Reseghetti said.