The river that crosses the capital still carries too much water and bacteria less than a month before the opening of the Olympic Games.
« We will see more clearly in mid-July. » After months of unwavering optimism, the recent comments by the president of the Olympic organizing committee, Tony Estanguet, on the quality of the water in the Seine, are somewhat cooling. Less than a month before the start of the Olympic triathlon event on July 30, at the Pont Alexandre III, the river is not yet fit for swimming.
More than 1.4 billion euros have been invested to depollute the Seine “by 75%” and then allow everyone to dive in it in Paris from next year, after a century of prohibition. To do this, it is necessary to reduce as much as possible the presence of the two types of bacteria taken into account to determine whether water is swimmable or not: Escherichia coli and intestinal enterococci. These bacteria « are representative of other types of microbiological contamination »says Thomas Thiebault, lecturer-researcher at the École pratique des hautes études – Université PSL. They can generate a pathology…
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