![]() The principle of the plan is simple: making the most of rain as close as possible to where it falls. ![]() ![]() The plan aims to create more permeable and green spaces in the city. Paris’s city council response was to unanimously vote for the ParisPluie plan in March 2018. Instead, most of it runs off, joins the sewers, which, sometimes, can’t manage the extra water, overflows and ends up in the Seine, bringing with it all the impurities collected along the way.Ī projection study done by the city estimated that the amount of polluted water ending up in the Seine, if current conditions remain unchanged, would increase by 76% in the next twenty years. In Paris, where 66% of surfaces are impermeable, rain has a harder time to find its way back into the ground. In a natural setting, where earth and sky face each other without barriers, the life of most raindrops is simple enough: 50% infiltrates in the earth, 40% goes back into the air, and only 10% runs off. There are several elements that contributed to the current pollution levels of the Seine, a significant one being that the equivalent of 1,000 Olympic swimming pools of polluted waters ends up in the Seine every year due to rainfall. And once the games are done, the river will be open to all along the whole Greater Paris area for a swim or just a quick plunge. This might soon change, since Paris has big plans to clean the river for the 2024 Olympics, when crowds will be able to watch swimming competitions sitting along the riverbanks. Excepting the Villette basin, the Seine is unsuitable for bathing. Today, the average Parisian has a difficult time imagining themselves dipping their feet into the river. The French swimmer Émile Paulus won the first ‘Traversée de Paris’, Paris crossing, after a swim of 11.6 km in the river Seine against eight other swimmers.
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