Why Cleaning the Seine will Fail

This is a video about the 1.5 billion dollar cleanup of the Seine.

Images via Getty
Map source by MapTiler / OpenStreetMap Contributors via Geolayers 3

Sources:

Paris, Urban Planning, Design

[SpaceStickwithSpaceTick]

I find it hilarious how professional this videos visuals and tone are and then out of the blue its like "The sewer system mixes the s*** water and storm water together". I wish more informative videos did that.

[JosTheMan]

"The people onboard, weren't on board." Perfect line

[seinezo]

As a Parisian, I had friends in highschool that would go swim in the Seine. Naturally, once they got out of the water, they were no longer my friends.

[Alex-pwsi]

I love the way he says "shitwater". It's so professional.

[jenelaina]

It's 2023, no one should be overflowing sewage into a waterway. Absolutely not one to judge, we have combined sewer systems still in Michigan and it's absurd they haven't been separated yet. Especially with climate change increasing heavy rain events. Our outflow is the Great Lakes basin and fresh water is kind of important. More power to her and hope progress pace gets picked up worldwide (IJA is helping here some at least).

[MedElallami]

Future Note: they messed up cleaning the Seine, and Paris became famous for athletes getting sick after swimming in the river.

[Feunouill]

Hay Hogg, Excellent video as often.
I live 80km before Paris along the Seine and we swim in it all summer because the water looks really clean there. But when you take the train for Paris (along the Seine all the way) from my small town you can see every 10k the color of the water changing bit after bit, from the beautiful green color from where I live to the classic Paris' Brown™.
I really hope Madame Hidalgo can put her vision into reality even tho we're not there yet.
Also the canal in the north of Paris is already swimmable and hold small pools in the summer during 'Paris Plage'.
Have a nice day.

[jdjphotographynl]

That Fern announcement was brilliant. 🤣

[smitchered]

As a frenchman, excellent video! Thank you! On point humor, good descriptions, and nice 3d renders.

[eritain]

In 2012, Portland, Oregon completed the Big Pipe Project to reduce combined sewer overflows, at a similar price tag. But it's worth mentioning that the three Big Pipes are really just the second line of defense.

The humble first line is preventing so much runoff from going into the sewers in the first place: rain gardens and stormwater sumps disconnect downspouts from the sewer and send the rain into the ground, like it did before all the pavement. Clean streams from outside the city that had been canalized through the sewer were given their own, separate pipeline to the river. And some of the combined sewers were separated, with the stormwater going to a large, newly reconstructed wetland.

It took 20 years, but rainy Portland went from 2100 hours of overflow each year to 13.

[ritaheller]

Crazy how much Olympics shape urbanism. Daniel and I were recently in Barcelona and we learned that the same happened with the city beach (Barceloneta) in ‘92. Thanks for the amazing content!! And congrats for fern!! suscribed 🧡 love from Valencia

[johnjeanb]

Parisian here. I fully support the actions to clean the Seine river. Hidalgo, Paris mayor is looking for lime lights. Cleaning the Seine river is OBVIOUSLY NOT an action limited to Paris but of all Departements and Régions bathed by the Seine. So real actions in water processing and garbage collection is needed, ABSOLUTELY. I can see some progress (Huge difference with my childhood in the 50s) in my home town of Asnieres (20km downstream of Paris). There are fishs, there are plants, animals, no smell, some devices to collect floating debris, bottles, etc, but still quite a lot to do.

[Icemanfreezer]

German urban planner here :)
60% of the german canalnetwork is a mixed system... We need to change that in the near future. Doing so is incredibly expensive though. Also, separate systems come with the disadvantage, that the rainwater won't end up in a water treatment facility, but instead flow straight into the rivers. This might not sound bad at first, but rainwater, especially in urban environments, is contaminated with heaps of things (carbon emissions picked up by rain from the air, litter, tirerubber picked up off the streets, all sorts of dirt transported by air that end up on rooftops, the list goes on). Some cities, such as cologne, have a separate water treatment facility just for rainwater. This is the ideal way to do it and should be the standard. However as I said before, this is an extremely costly thing to do, especially if there's only a mixed system in place. Switching system means digging up EVERY street and reconnecting EVERY house via two separate connections. So yeah, not really something that's done within the span of a year, but rather a slow process that'll be done piece by piece over several years.

[thesupernova]

I was watching Paris Olympics 2024 "Athletes hospitalized after swimming in Seine"..

[gonun]

Here in Basel, swimming in the Rhine River is a huge thing, on hot days there are thousands floating down the river. I wish Paris the best of luck in achieving their goal.

[underarmbowlingincidentof]

I live in Munich and always thought being able to bathe in the river in the middle of the city was a norm.
I was so surprised when I went to Paris and Rome.
Having a swimmable river is such a big thing. Every city if possible should have one. Maybe they could also add a surfing wave like we have in Munich :P

[Makzimilien]

It is remarkable how fast the production value of your channel is improving. This is amongst the best stuff out there. Keep going!

[QueenBitchization]

"But on the other hand, maybe just don't shit into a public river."

[thattobithough]

Oh man I love the balance between informative and shitpost. It's just perfect. The introduction to the fern channel was made beautifully

[Inexhausta]

As a Frenchie, I’m impressed by the quality of this video. Thank you for your incredible work!