In the context of the Paris bid for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympique Games, the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has confirmed her wish to organise the triathlon and 10km open water marathon swim in the River Seine in the heart of the capital.
This undertaking, if it is included into the continuity of measures already underway to reclaim the Seine and its banks, will transform the relationship between the city and water. It opens up enormous possibilities for future activities in the metropolis where recreational activities are limited by the scarcity of surface water and the meagre offer of sites for swimming and water sports.
To prepare this major legacy of the Olympic bid, alongside the good management of discharges into the Seine and rain water and the speeding up of the Plan to Improve the Quality of Water in the Seine, PAQES, it is necessary to analyse all the tributaries of the Seine and Marne and to produce an initial inventory of potential sites for bathing.
Apur, has for many years assisted the key players of water and has developed a thorough knowledge of the Seine.
On the basis of this knowledge and after having gathered a great deal of complementary information from key players linked to the Seine and the Marne, Apur has drawn up an initial list of 49 possible sites for swimming in Greater Paris - the Métropole du Grand Paris -.
The 49 sites able to provide numerous places to bathe were identified according to three points:
- A multicriteria approach: accessibility, urban dynamics, security (navigable channel for the passage of boats), availability (occupation but also discharge into and intake of water).
- 3 types of swimming venues: next to the banks (floating pools…), in the river itself (secondary branch… ) or on the embankment (swimming pools…).
- 3 types of river banks: natural river bank, mixed embankment (mineral embankment and natural bank), artificial embankment.
Two olympic sites were chosen: the bridge, Pont d’Iéna (Trocadéro – Champ de Mars) and the Olympic Village (Saint-Denis, Ile de Saint-Denis and Saint Ouen). On a wider scale, the sites which were mapped offer a rich variety of development potential, for seasonal bathing and some suitable for use all year round once improvement measures have been carried out, which for some would rely on the possibility of natural filtration (phytoremediation…).
A prioritised plan of action has been set in motion under the aegis of the Government and the City of Paris which should make it possible to attain a quality of water in the Marne and the Seine suitable for swimming in. The Public Water Purification Department, SIAAP, the City of Paris DPE, Ports de Paris and the Municipalities of Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne are all involved.
