On Sunday the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, he said that the Seine, the river that crosses the city, will be partly suitable for bathing from 2025. At the moment a water reclamation is underway in anticipation of the 2024 Olympics which will be held in Paris and whose opening ceremony will take place right on the Seine, so such as the Olympic open water swimming and triathlon events, which include swimming, cycling and running.
The plan is to create three natural pools – in the centre, in the west and in the east of the city – monitored by lifeguards and marked by buoys where everyone can swim and for which platforms will be built for changing, showering and keeping your personal belongings safe.
Swimming in the Seine has been illegal since 1923 and the river has been deemed “biologically dead” since the 1960s due to the pollution produced by industry and agriculture in the regions where it flows. In recent decades, the local government has invested a lot of money to clean it up and Anne Hidalgo’s administration had said it wanted to make it suitable for bathing as early as the end of 2020, predicting in 2021 that 1.8 billion euros would be needed to complete the project.