6 ms·

For those in the know, was this hundred year ban on swimming in the Seine due to pollution reasonable? I find it hard to wrap my head around a liberal European

For those in the know, was this hundred year ban on swimming in the Seine due to pollution reasonable? I find it hard to wrap my head around a liberal European country letting a river stay so contaminated it's dangerous to swim in, at least in this century.

bombcar 3y ago
Basically heavy rains would overflow the sewer system and dump raw sewage into the river.
wnevets 3y ago
> I find it hard to wrap my head around a liberal European country letting a river stay so contaminated it's dangerous to swim in, at least in this century. You may not want to look up if swimming in the Thames is safe.
- worik 3y ago
  >> liberal European country letting a river stay so contaminated > You may not want to look up if swimming in the Thames is safe. The Thames is in England They said "liberal European...". As much as (some of) the English might hate it they are European...
  - adastra22 3y ago
    The UK is geographically situated on the continent of Europe.
    - pyuser583 3y ago
      Europe is not a continent. It is a peninsular sub-content of the Eurasian landmass. Like India.
      - wnevets 3y ago
        > Europe, second smallest of the world’s continents. https://www.britannica.com/place/Europe https://www.britannica.com/place/Europe Continents are more about how humans want to group landmasses rather than a hard scientific definition.
- nsteel 3y ago
  But it's not banned. You can officially swim at a bunch of places, including the disgusting inner London Docklands area, as well as the dock2dock event. I think the idea is that it's fine providing you don't swallow any of the water... Everyone I know who's done it (mostly from my tri club) has gotten ill afterwards.
FredPret 3y ago
It's probably an infrastructure issue. Fixing old water treatment piping for a whole city that is also very old is going to be expensive!
ggm 3y ago
There are limits to how much remediation you can do to river water quality. Not that people shouldn't try, but if e.g. upstream sites leach heavy metals, or biological contaminants deep in ground water, there's only so much you can do. Brisbane (where I live) the river is affectionately called 'the brown snake' mainly because of silt. Even though sand mining/dredging has ended, the river is silty still. Is that why swimming isn't recommended? No: its because upstream on oxley creek, major industrial and agricultural runoff issues during historic floods in the last 10-20 years have raised contamination, fecal coliform and other problems such that you risk serious antibiotic resistant bugs if you accidentally ingest too much, or get it in cuts (I know because I row, and a rowing colleague wound up on IV antibiotics with amputation being discussed from a deep cut) When it floods in brisbane, associated creeks continue to leach the effects of 100+ years of industrial waste and effluent into the water. Nearby cities have land which is capped 2m deep over what was septic tank discharge, it is said that shigella is still a significant risk if you dig into the soil. I don't know, I thought it died, but perhaps it persists? Well.. that and the bullsharks but we're talking about pollution. Yes, the Thames is coming back to life and significant fish numbers have risen in the last decade, we're miles off "the great stink" which caused Bazalgette to construct the sewers on the riverbank. Is it always entirely safe to "be in" -well no. Sources upstream occasionally dump sewage overflow along the length of the Thames. Its meant to be emergency only, but sewage overflow has to be dealt with pretty rapidly. They try not to. What do you do, when the system is overloaded? I am amazed Paris has been able to restore river health enough to do this. Well done!
- defrost 3y ago
  > What do you do, when the system is overloaded? Bazalgette 2.0 - post millennium mega sewer on steroids. We’re building a 25km Super Sewer under the Thames to intercept those nasty spills and clean up our river for the good of the city, its wildlife and you. https://www.tideway.london/ https://www.tideway.london/ Impressive and hopefully enough for a few years. It's a massive project with many tunnel lines, deep sink holes to pump stations and tunnel boring machine launch and recovery points etc. Until then - don't flush those f-ing wet wipes!! :-) Super Sewer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZszSTjZ-i4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZszSTjZ-i4
- 3y ago
smohare 3y ago
[dead]
MattGaiser 3y ago
Plenty of environmentalism is just for future projects. Canada is willing to derail all sorts of new projects over pollution concerns, but it wasn't until 2020 that we stopped a pulp mill from just dumping their waste in a estuary and they thought that the government wasn't serious, so they didn't take meaningful action.
- xmprt 3y ago
  Stop the bleeding is an acceptable policy for these types of things. Just because other existing projects have pollution concerns isn't a good reason to approve new projects with pollution concerns. And once you cut off creating new projects you can slowly get through the rest of the backlog of existing issues which will either get fixed or die out eventually.
- refurb 3y ago
  Victoria,BC has been dumping untreated sewage into the ocean up to a few years ago.
refurb 3y ago
I find it hard to wrap my head around a liberal European country letting a river stay so contaminated it's dangerous to swim in, at least in this century. I think your assumptions around liberal European countries is seriously flawed.
littlestymaar 3y ago
AFAIK the main problem with the Seine isn't industrial pollution, it's black water biological pollution that results of how the sewers have been designed: unlike in most cities, in Paris the sewers collect both wastewater and rainwater, but when it rains “too much” (and the ceiling isn't that high) then the system overflow to the Seine, bringing a lot of heavily poluted water to it.
jacobsenscott 3y ago
Well, it was fixed less than a quarter of the way through this century. For a city the size of Paris, with a sewer system more than a century old, I would say they did well.
HdS84 3y ago
German here. You can absolutely remediate heavily polluted rivers. Best example might be the Rhine. It was so toxic in the 70s that everything in it died. Now it's a nice river with lots of living things and you can absolutely swim in it. It's still dangerous because of ships and currents, but at least the water itself won't kill you. But there are still lots of other rivers where remediation takes still place, e.g. because the rivers was used for raw sewage.
- fransje26 3y ago
  Yep. All the toxic stuff moved on to the Netherlands...
zokier 3y ago
I don't know if there are any rivers going through major european cities that I would consider safe to swim in. You have to understand that the current-day environmentalism is only a recent phenomena, while the waters have been getting polluted for centuries. It just takes lot of time and effort to turn that around.
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  The Isar in Munich is safe and people swim in it all the time. It helps that it is not navigable, except by kayaks and rubber boats (sometimes).
- bigbluesax 3y ago
  The Danube running through Vienna is safe to swim in: https://www.wien.gv.at/forschung/laboratorien/umweltmedizin/wasserhygiene/badewasserqualitaet/index.html https://www.wien.gv.at/forschung/laboratorien/umweltmedizin/... The water quality doesn't protect you from the current or the heavy boat traffic through. So most swimming is done in a disconnected side channel called "Alte Donau".
  - insane_dreamer 3y ago
    There's a nude beach there too (or at least there was 20 years ago)
- lgvld 3y ago
  I remember you can have a swim in Stockholm.
  - alkonaut 3y ago
    The rapids in the city center are famously clean enough för salmon and trout, but like any densely populated area there are also places and times of the year when the water isn’t good for swimming.
hannob 3y ago
Well, Berlin has the same issue. Unlike Paris, it has no plan of cleaning up the Spree any time soon. It has been discussed every now and then, but it's always too complicated, or the solutions available aren't liked by the people in charge.
- arethuza 3y ago
  I thought I had seen people swimming in the Spree - turns out it was a swimming pool floating in the Spree! https://www.visitberlin.de/en/badeschiff-der-arena https://www.visitberlin.de/en/badeschiff-der-arena
  - hannob 3y ago
    Yeah, that's the perfect symbol of what's wrong... "Our river is so dirty, it's too dangerous to swim in there. Let's build a swimming pool into the river!"
- NeoTar 3y ago
  People swim in the Muggelsee which is basically a part of the Spree...
- guruz 3y ago
  There is an initiative that wants to have a side channel of the Spree for bathing. Close to Museumsinsel / Fischerinsel. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flussbad_Berlin https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flussbad_Berlin https://www.flussbad-berlin.de/ https://www.flussbad-berlin.de/
slowmotiony 3y ago
Lots of areas in Paris where you can't even walk around because it's too dangerous - the river is really the least of our problems.
- hermitcrab 3y ago
  Is that from personal experience or hearsay?
- steeve 3y ago
  I am Parisian. Please enlighten me where those places are so I don't go. /s
  - slowmotiony 3y ago
    Sure - Gare du Nord, Jaurés, Barbès, Cambrai, Goutte d’Or, all around Périphérique highway, and probably lots of other ones. Here's a link to a "BeSafe" app to help you navigate Paris without being pickpocketed or shanked! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/besafe/id425631096 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/besafe/id425631096
    - steeve 3y ago
      For the poor soul that had to read this, these are typical places people would answer. I literally walk through Gare du Nord every week at midnight and never even had a bad look. Sure, drug addicts and black market smokes, your typical poor area. You are actually more likely to get mugged on the Champs Elysées or the 16th.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bombcar 3y ago

Basically heavy rains would overflow the sewer system and dump raw sewage into the river.

wnevets 3y ago

> I find it hard to wrap my head around a liberal European country letting a river stay so contaminated it's dangerous to swim in, at least in this century. You may not want to look up if swimming in the Thames is safe.

worik 3y ago
>> liberal European country letting a river stay so contaminated > You may not want to look up if swimming in the Thames is safe. The Thames is in England They said "liberal European...". As much as (some of) the English might hate it they are European...
- adastra22 3y ago
  The UK is geographically situated on the continent of Europe.
  - pyuser583 3y ago
    Europe is not a continent. It is a peninsular sub-content of the Eurasian landmass. Like India.
    - wnevets 3y ago
      > Europe, second smallest of the world’s continents. https://www.britannica.com/place/Europe https://www.britannica.com/place/Europe Continents are more about how humans want to group landmasses rather than a hard scientific definition.
nsteel 3y ago
But it's not banned. You can officially swim at a bunch of places, including the disgusting inner London Docklands area, as well as the dock2dock event. I think the idea is that it's fine providing you don't swallow any of the water... Everyone I know who's done it (mostly from my tri club) has gotten ill afterwards.

FredPret 3y ago

It's probably an infrastructure issue. Fixing old water treatment piping for a whole city that is also very old is going to be expensive!

ggm 3y ago

There are limits to how much remediation you can do to river water quality. Not that people shouldn't try, but if e.g. upstream sites leach heavy metals, or biological contaminants deep in ground water, there's only so much you can do. Brisbane (where I live) the river is affectionately called 'the brown snake' mainly because of silt. Even though sand mining/dredging has ended, the river is silty still. Is that why swimming isn't recommended? No: its because upstream on oxley creek, major industrial and agricultural runoff issues during historic floods in the last 10-20 years have raised contamination, fecal coliform and other problems such that you risk serious antibiotic resistant bugs if you accidentally ingest too much, or get it in cuts (I know because I row, and a rowing colleague wound up on IV antibiotics with amputation being discussed from a deep cut) When it floods in brisbane, associated creeks continue to leach the effects of 100+ years of industrial waste and effluent into the water. Nearby cities have land which is capped 2m deep over what was septic tank discharge, it is said that shigella is still a significant risk if you dig into the soil. I don't know, I thought it died, but perhaps it persists? Well.. that and the bullsharks but we're talking about pollution. Yes, the Thames is coming back to life and significant fish numbers have risen in the last decade, we're miles off "the great stink" which caused Bazalgette to construct the sewers on the riverbank. Is it always entirely safe to "be in" -well no. Sources upstream occasionally dump sewage overflow along the length of the Thames. Its meant to be emergency only, but sewage overflow has to be dealt with pretty rapidly. They try not to. What do you do, when the system is overloaded? I am amazed Paris has been able to restore river health enough to do this. Well done!

defrost 3y ago
> What do you do, when the system is overloaded? Bazalgette 2.0 - post millennium mega sewer on steroids. We’re building a 25km Super Sewer under the Thames to intercept those nasty spills and clean up our river for the good of the city, its wildlife and you. https://www.tideway.london/ https://www.tideway.london/ Impressive and hopefully enough for a few years. It's a massive project with many tunnel lines, deep sink holes to pump stations and tunnel boring machine launch and recovery points etc. Until then - don't flush those f-ing wet wipes!! :-) Super Sewer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZszSTjZ-i4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZszSTjZ-i4
3y ago

smohare 3y ago

[dead]

MattGaiser 3y ago

Plenty of environmentalism is just for future projects. Canada is willing to derail all sorts of new projects over pollution concerns, but it wasn't until 2020 that we stopped a pulp mill from just dumping their waste in a estuary and they thought that the government wasn't serious, so they didn't take meaningful action.

xmprt 3y ago
Stop the bleeding is an acceptable policy for these types of things. Just because other existing projects have pollution concerns isn't a good reason to approve new projects with pollution concerns. And once you cut off creating new projects you can slowly get through the rest of the backlog of existing issues which will either get fixed or die out eventually.
refurb 3y ago
Victoria,BC has been dumping untreated sewage into the ocean up to a few years ago.

refurb 3y ago

I find it hard to wrap my head around a liberal European country letting a river stay so contaminated it's dangerous to swim in, at least in this century. I think your assumptions around liberal European countries is seriously flawed.

littlestymaar 3y ago

AFAIK the main problem with the Seine isn't industrial pollution, it's black water biological pollution that results of how the sewers have been designed: unlike in most cities, in Paris the sewers collect both wastewater and rainwater, but when it rains “too much” (and the ceiling isn't that high) then the system overflow to the Seine, bringing a lot of heavily poluted water to it.

jacobsenscott 3y ago

Well, it was fixed less than a quarter of the way through this century. For a city the size of Paris, with a sewer system more than a century old, I would say they did well.

HdS84 3y ago

German here. You can absolutely remediate heavily polluted rivers. Best example might be the Rhine. It was so toxic in the 70s that everything in it died. Now it's a nice river with lots of living things and you can absolutely swim in it. It's still dangerous because of ships and currents, but at least the water itself won't kill you. But there are still lots of other rivers where remediation takes still place, e.g. because the rivers was used for raw sewage.

fransje26 3y ago
Yep. All the toxic stuff moved on to the Netherlands...

zokier 3y ago

I don't know if there are any rivers going through major european cities that I would consider safe to swim in. You have to understand that the current-day environmentalism is only a recent phenomena, while the waters have been getting polluted for centuries. It just takes lot of time and effort to turn that around.

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
The Isar in Munich is safe and people swim in it all the time. It helps that it is not navigable, except by kayaks and rubber boats (sometimes).
bigbluesax 3y ago
The Danube running through Vienna is safe to swim in: https://www.wien.gv.at/forschung/laboratorien/umweltmedizin/wasserhygiene/badewasserqualitaet/index.html https://www.wien.gv.at/forschung/laboratorien/umweltmedizin/... The water quality doesn't protect you from the current or the heavy boat traffic through. So most swimming is done in a disconnected side channel called "Alte Donau".
- insane_dreamer 3y ago
  There's a nude beach there too (or at least there was 20 years ago)
lgvld 3y ago
I remember you can have a swim in Stockholm.
- alkonaut 3y ago
  The rapids in the city center are famously clean enough för salmon and trout, but like any densely populated area there are also places and times of the year when the water isn’t good for swimming.

hannob 3y ago

Well, Berlin has the same issue. Unlike Paris, it has no plan of cleaning up the Spree any time soon. It has been discussed every now and then, but it's always too complicated, or the solutions available aren't liked by the people in charge.

arethuza 3y ago
I thought I had seen people swimming in the Spree - turns out it was a swimming pool floating in the Spree! https://www.visitberlin.de/en/badeschiff-der-arena https://www.visitberlin.de/en/badeschiff-der-arena
- hannob 3y ago
  Yeah, that's the perfect symbol of what's wrong... "Our river is so dirty, it's too dangerous to swim in there. Let's build a swimming pool into the river!"
NeoTar 3y ago
People swim in the Muggelsee which is basically a part of the Spree...
guruz 3y ago
There is an initiative that wants to have a side channel of the Spree for bathing. Close to Museumsinsel / Fischerinsel. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flussbad_Berlin https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flussbad_Berlin https://www.flussbad-berlin.de/ https://www.flussbad-berlin.de/

slowmotiony 3y ago

Lots of areas in Paris where you can't even walk around because it's too dangerous - the river is really the least of our problems.

hermitcrab 3y ago
Is that from personal experience or hearsay?
steeve 3y ago
I am Parisian. Please enlighten me where those places are so I don't go. /s
- slowmotiony 3y ago
  Sure - Gare du Nord, Jaurés, Barbès, Cambrai, Goutte d’Or, all around Périphérique highway, and probably lots of other ones. Here's a link to a "BeSafe" app to help you navigate Paris without being pickpocketed or shanked! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/besafe/id425631096 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/besafe/id425631096
  - steeve 3y ago
    For the poor soul that had to read this, these are typical places people would answer. I literally walk through Gare du Nord every week at midnight and never even had a bad look. Sure, drug addicts and black market smokes, your typical poor area. You are actually more likely to get mugged on the Champs Elysées or the 16th.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]