PARIS – As Paris races to clean up the River Seine for the Olympics, houseboat owner Stephane Bachot is one of around 230 river dwellers who have hooked up their kitchen and bathroom to the city sewers.
The French capital is investing massively to ensure open water swimmers and triathlon athletes can swim safely in the river during the Summer Games from July 26 to Aug 11.
Making sure its houseboats and restaurants do not dump their waste straight into the watercourse is part of the plan.
Bachot has adapted his boat to the new set-up.
“As we were redoing the boat’s plumbing anyway, we added in some ducts,” he said, surrounded by plants on the deck of his floating home. “And we hooked up a few months ago.”
At docks across Paris, boats at each mooring can now connect to a pump to suck their wastewater out into a pit. From there, a second pump sends the sewage up into the mains running under the street.
With just months to go before the Olympics, many are worried the Seine will not be clean enough on time.
Organisers cancelled three test events in July and August last summer due to elevated E. coli readings following very heavy rainfall and a faulty sewer valve.
Earlier in March, Brazilian swimmer Ana Marcela Cunha, the reigning Olympic open water champion, called on Paris to have a Plan B in case the Seine was not ready.
She said the health of athletes “must come first”.
But France has said the river will be fit for Olympic races if there is no major storm beforehand. Both President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo have promised to take the plunge before the start of the event.
The authorities have spent €1.4 billion (S$2 billion) upgrading sewage and storm water treatment facilities in the Paris region over the last decade to improve the water quality of the Seine as well as its main tributary, the Marne.
Around €12 million of this has been pumped into providing 28 river docks with sewage pits and pumps connected to the capital’s sewers.
French official Christophe Noel du Payrat said he and other officials had to doorstep most houseboat owners to convince them to make the change.
But their efforts have paid off and today only 20 houseboats still need to make the required changes, he said.
Renaud Brosse, a 55-year-old who has lived on the river for around 20 years, was one of those who agreed.
He said the necessary plumbing changes were “quite easy” to make.
“It’s good to be hooked up,” he said, adding he thought it was normal for anyone making a life on the water to “care at least a little about the environment”. AFP
