Why Olympians Can’t Swim in the Seine

Paris' $1.5BN cleanup plan is in-seine.

Research sources -

Additional footage and images courtesy of 20th Century Fox, France24, Sortirapaps, Paris Olympics 2024 andWorld Triathlon.

Follow Get Construction Talking

Listen to The World's Best Construction Podcast by The B1M

#construction #architecture #infrastructure

0:00 Intro
0:51 In-Seine Plans
2:21 LARQ PureVis
3:24 Cleaning the River
5:13 Dipping Back In
7:08 Olympic Legacy

Ripping and/or editing this video is illegal and will result in legal action.

© 2024 The B1M Limited

[tomwalsh]

4:33 - if only there was a well known landmark in paris to use for scale. 🤔

[switzerland]

Insane. It's normal to swim in any river in Switzerland now but many were dangerous 50 years ago.

[SCRBGRD]

Update August 2024:
Welp, they swam in it anyway....

[rich_in_paradise]

£99 for a water bottle? Someone is in seine for sure.

[olivierpuyou]

I don't know if the Seine will be completely clean but already with a 90% reduction in pollutants it seems to be on the right track and then in terms of gigantic engineering France has been one of the leaders for centuries.
(see the construction of the Canal du Midi under Louis XIV).

[memofromessex]

"The Seine is heavily polluted with high levels of wastewater, sewage and faecal matter." - Thames Water shrugs

"Swimming in the river puts you at risk of contracting E. coli and incurs €15" - Thames Water, 'Can we charge people to swim in sh*t?'

[eliseereclus]

I'm a Parisian. I am HIGHLY SKEPTICAL. I also love the idea of 26 swimming pools... as long as the water is NOT directly taken from the Seine, but filtered first. No matter how much they'll say the water is safe. And the swimming pools better have super-strong walls in case a 50m long and many many tons heavy freight barge suddenly... well, barges in.

[Maitch]

I love that the French are using the Olympics to actually improve Paris instead of just dumping money on building stuff they don't need later

[user]

Zurich's clean up is so successful thst I wasn't aware there ever was one. Swimming in the Limmat is possible at many different great locations. Furthermore the lake has also many access points and Zurich doesn't disappoint in the giant amount of public swimming pools both openair and covered

[MisterStuzy]

It didn’t work. They’ve cancelled the swimming triathlon because of pollution in the river (apparently they didn’t expect it to rain).

[_yonas]

So many good news coming out of Paris recently in terms of improving their infrastructure for the people. :)

[soly-dp-colo]

French here. Very good reporting. Just a few mistakes:
- The pool's name Bassin de la Villette is pronounced /veelett/, not /veeliett/.
- The Oise river is pronounced /was/, not /oyz/.
- About the hole being dug at Austerlitz, your numbers are mixed up on screen, showing 34 m wide and 50 m high (yet you say the opposite, so I think your graph is wrong)
Finally, most Parisians don't like to take a dip in the Seine because the current is extremely strong and because the boat and barge traffic is very heavy. It's just too risky to swim in it outside of these official pools.

[ClipsNSnips]

there's no way that brits actually say "feeshal", that's got to be a joke, right? 😂😂

[ursobr]

Both the Marne and Oise rivers flow INTO the Seine — the Marne just before the Seine enters Paris, the Oise (pronounced "wahss") just after it exits the city. So, I don't understand how cleaning up the Seine will make them cleaner as well.

[polishguy]

@TheB1M 4:26 you got the dimensions mixed up

[adamcheklat]

Nothing’s ever certain. If they pull this off, it’ll be nothing short of a miracle.

[machenka]

In Copenhagen we have several harbor swimming areas and it’s such a life saver during a hot summer. It’s going to be great for the Parisians! 👍

[gamerpixels]

actually Amsterdam has a;ready come a long way in cleaning the canals. Even the queen has already swam there several times during a charity ecent against cancer. They achieved this cleaning operationby flushing the canals in a process where they closed several sluses and pumped in "clean" lake water on one side in order to flush out the polluted water. Meanwhile, they made a great effort to "fish" scrap metal and other waste out of the canals with 3 boats working 40hrs/week

[camilla_k]

Swimming in Paris: 🤒
Swimming in London: 😢
Swimming in New York City: 💀💀💀

[nicolasbertin]

The fuck ? It's pronounced "feekal" matter not "feeshal" lol