The Seine is typically filthy. What to know before Olympic swimmers dive in

The Seine is typically filthy. What to know before Olympic swimmers dive in

Over eight days in August 1900, dozens of swimmers dove into the muddy waters of the Seine River in Paris to compete in the second Olympic Games. Cheering crowds packed the riverbank, as the strong downstream current carried athletes to impossibly fast finish times.

In a newspaper review, editor W. T. Stead described the Seine as “the main street” of what was then “the greatest show on earth” — even if it did have a bit of a smell.

“It is extraordinary, the extent to which the French have utilized their river,” wrote Stead, then 51.

“In hot weather the fragrance reminds one of Venice, but, odourous or otherwise, the bright, rushing current … adds immensely to the general effect.”

This summer, Olympic athletes could find themselves back in the Seine as the Olympics return to Paris. Triathlon and marathon swimming are scheduled to take place in the river, where it has been illegal to swim for a century. 

Politicians insist the water will be clean enough for athletes by then, but experts aren’t so sure.

Is the Seine safe to swim in?

Like many old cities around the world, Paris has a combined sewer system, which means wastewater and storm water flow through the same pipes. Those pipes can reach capacity when it rains long and hard, meaning raw wastewater — like sewage — flows into the Seine instead of a treatment plant.

Swimming there has been banned since 1923, with a few exceptions for the odd competition.

The city has tried to clean up the river, but the water has tested unsafe for humans in recent weeks, though cleaner on other days. Data provided by the Fluidion Open Data Initiative on E. coli bacteria levels in the Seine showed 852 colony-forming units per 100 millilitres as of Tuesday, down from 1,459 on Monday.

The World Triathlon Federation has determined 900 colony-forming units per 100 millilitres as safe for competitions.

Dan Angelescu, CEO of Fluidion, has been testing the river water for years. He spoke to CBC News in June and said, based on data available at the time, he personally wouldn’t have swum in the Seine.

“When our data says the water quality is good, I’ll be the first to jump in,” Angelescu said.

“Over the past two months, we haven’t seen a single day where water quality was acceptable. So we’re starting to be a little bit worried.”

Data posted online by the City of Paris showed the water was suitable for swimming six out of seven days between July 8 and 14, based on European water quality regulations. The city tests four sites in the Seine for E. coli and Escherichia coli and intestinal enterococci (IE), both typically used as primary indicators of fecal contamination.

“Despite a [river] flow rate that remains more than three times higher than the usual flow rate in summer, the water quality of the Seine is relatively good over the observed period,” the site read on Wednesday.

How is Paris planning to clean the river?

Paris invested €1.4 billion ($2 billion Cdn) in building infrastructure to catch more storm water when it rains — the same dirty wastewater that flows into the Seine during heavy rainfall.

Officials opened a massive underground water storage basin next to the Austerlitz train station in May, hoping the facility can collect excess rainwater and stop waste water from getting into the Seine. The basin can hold the equivalent of 20 Olympic swimming pools of dirty water that will now be treated.

It’s the main piece of major infrastructure improvements the city has rushed to finish in time for the Olympics, but also to ensure the Seine stays clean long after the closing ceremonies.

The problem is that a few spells of heavy rain could push E. coli levels up.

“The Seine is not a special case,” Metin Duran, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Villanova University who has researched storm-water management, told The Associated Press. “It really is a complicated and very costly problem.” 

So will the river be swim-ready in time?

Politicians and organizers have insisted it will be. French President Emmanuel Macron said the cleansing of the Seine “will be a tremendous moment of French pride and celebration,” while Paris Deputy Mayor Pierre Rabadan said “there was no Plan B.”

The cleaning plan took longer than expected due to unusually heavy spring rainfall, but organizers hope the combination of dry, sunny summer weather and new infrastructure will make enough of a difference.

“It’s still a challenge because we know that, with big rain, we are exposed to risk. But … because we started the program four years ago, the water quality now is much better,” Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris 2024 organizing committee and three-time Olympic canoeing champion, said in an interview with CBC News.

“So whatever will be the situation for the games, it will be a very positive legacy for the Seine.” 

Estanguet and the top government official for the Paris region, Marc Guillaume, joined Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo for a dip in the river on Wednesday to prove the river is clean enough to host outdoor swimming events. French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra already took the plunge on Saturday.

The four officials all wore suits that covered most of their skin.

“The Seine is exquisite,” said Hidalgo from the water. After emerging, she continued to rave, “The water is very, very good. A little cool, but not so bad.”

What’s this about a ‘shit in the Seine’ protest?

Hidalgo was originally expected to swim in the river with Macron on June 23. Parisians who were fed up with the amount of money being spent on the Olympics encouraged people to poop in the river before the politicians took the plunge. Some declared their allegiance to the cause under the hashtag #JeChieDansLaSeineLe23Juin, which translates to “I shit in the Seine on June 23.”

Angelescu said it would have to be an immense amount of human waste to bring down the water quality.

“It would have to be thousands and thousands of people that do this,” said Angelescu. “I really hope it’s not going to be the case, but it certainly makes headlines in the newspapers when people say that.”

What happens to the outdoor swimming events if they can’t use the Seine?

If the Seine isn’t clean enough for the athletes, the triathlon will drop the swimming portion and run as a duathlon. The marathon swimming competition would be moved to the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium, which is just outside Paris and is already going to be hosting the rowing and canoe-kayaking events.

“It’s not very common, but it has happened a few times,” Olalla Cernuda, head of communications at World Triathlon, told AP the possibility of the swim portion being cancelled.

“And it’s always linked with water quality issues.”

Published at Wed, 17 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This Conservative MP is ‘best friends’ with Trump running mate J.D. Vance

Two men from disparate backgrounds who say they forged a friendship while feeling like outsiders at an elite American institution could help chart the future of the Canada-U.S. relationship.

Those men are Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance — who was picked by former president Trump as his running mate on Monday — and Jamil Jivani, the Conservative MP who was elected to Parliament in a byelection earlier this year.

If their respective parties win power this year and next, the long personal history between these two political neophytes could be an asset for Canada, some politics-watchers say.

Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S. Kirsten Hillman told CBC’s Power & Politics she is “very happy” to see Trump pick Vance, someone she said is well-known at the embassy for “supporting the Canada-U.S. relationship.”

Some European diplomats, meanwhile, are fearful of Vance, an avowed isolationist who’s campaigned against more aid for Ukraine.

A second Trump term — which, according to most polls, is the likely scenario — could be a turbulent one for Canada, with talk of a renewed trade war and a sustained push to make allies spend a lot more on defence or risk losing U.S. military support.

Canada is highly dependent on U.S. trade. It’s also a long-time laggard on defence spending.

Under a Conservative government, Jivani could be Canada’s conduit to the Oval Office.

Anthony Koch, a former spokesperson for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, said it doesn’t hurt that one of Poilevre’s high-profile recruits is close personal friends with a possible vice-president who’s familiar with Canada and its people.

“But at the end of the day, national interest will trump personal interest,” Koch told CBC News.

“I suspect both Jamil and J.D. are primarily concerned with serving their constituents more so than being chummy-chummy with the other side. But, yeah, it’s cool, we’ll see.”

Vance — a self-described “hillbilly” who grew up in a white working-class Ohio family with roots in neighbouring Kentucky’s coal country — and Jivani, the Black son of a single mother from a Toronto suburb, were classmates at Yale Law School.

It was there that the two became, according to Jivani, “best friends.”

“We attended a wine-and-cheese reception. I didn’t know so many different kinds of cheese existed. And I had never tasted wine before. Needless to say, I felt out of place. Across the room stood a fellow student who seemed equally unfamiliar with wine and cheese,” Jivani wrote of Vance in a November 2020 National Post op-ed.

“We went on to develop a strong friendship, forged through moments of shared discomfort over the course of our three years in the Ivy League.”

Jivani also performed the Bible reading at Vance’s wedding to his wife, Usha. In a social media post, Jivani described the U.S. senator-turned-VP candidate as his “brother.”

While previously unfamiliar with “hillbillies” and the people of Appalachia, Jivani said he bonded with Vance over their similar personal circumstances — growing up with poverty, addiction, “fatherlessness” and inadequate health care.

Jivani was not available for an interview.

Vance achieved fame after his book, Hillbilly Elegy, became a best-seller amid Trump’s rise to the presidency.

Vance’s memoir depicts his struggle to succeed in a “rust belt” town damaged by drug addiction and job loss as the manufacturing base was destroyed, in part, by globalization.

Vance’s book was praised by critics for offering an inside look at why so many working-class voters in Middle America have grown disaffected with their political leaders.

After the book’s success, Vance formed Our Ohio Renewal, a charitable organization focused on economic and social revitalization, and tapped Jivani to run its day-to-day operations — a testament to their continuing closeness years after their time at Yale.

The short-lived organization did relatively little work and brought in only about $300,000 in donations, according to a New York Times investigation.

Jivani would later say the group’s work was derailed by his cancer diagnosis — his lymphoma is now in remission. Our Ohio Renewal was wound down as Vance plunged into electoral politics.

But the group’s stated purpose — to tackle joblessness, the opioid crisis and broken families — reveals what drives these two millennial political figures.

In a 2017 video recorded at an event in Toledo, Ohio, where Jivani was representing Vance and his charity, the Canadian tied manufacturing job losses in the American heartland to drug addiction and broken families.

Jivani argued for more government intervention through community benefit agreements that guarantee jobs and benefits from companies that get government contracts.

In another era, conservatives like Vance and Jivani might have touted private sector solutions as the only fix.

Vance, an economic nationalist, and Jivani — a cultural warrior and critic of “wokeness” and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies — are on the frontlines of the fight to reshape conservatism into a form that eschews total devotion to free markets and free trade and supposed political correctness.

Jai Chabria, a former political adviser to Vance during his Senate race, said the VP pick is all about Trump’s nationalistic and protectionist “America First” agenda.

“J.D. Vance is probably the best person to go on TV and very tough environments with hostile hosts [to] advocate for his vision. He has the ability to communicate a message to the cocktail party set, but also to everyday working class Americans,” Chabria said when asked if Vance is the right pick for the job.

“He wants what’s best for America.”

In an April 2020 interview for Jivani’s now-defunct YouTube series, The Road Home, the two men discussed economic decline, disorienting technological change, the decline of the two-parent family unit and the rise of China.

Vance, a critic of libertarians, lamented the decline of traditional working class institutions like churches and unions and the demonization of civic nationalism.

While he’s the product of a prestigious law school with past work experience as a venture capitalist in San Francisco, Vance accused “elites” of ignoring people outside big, wealthy cities.

“The elite business class in our respective countries has become hyper-international. If you talk to a bank consultant in Toronto or Vancouver, would they feel more comfortable having dinner with an elite lawyer in Paris? Or a coal miner or an oil and gas worker in Alberta?” Vance told Jivani.

“For the elites of the U.S., there’s this gravitational velocity where their interests are no longer connected to the working class of their own country.”

In his March byelection victory speech, Jivani also railed against “liberal elites” in the Liberal Party but also people who run big corporations like banks and telecoms and Canada’s public schools.

This sort of populist, anti-corporate rhetoric runs through the Vance-Jivani strain of conservatism.

In his interview with Jivani, Vance said corporate behemoths like Apple and Google develop products in North America only to offshore manufacturing to cheaper jurisdictions like China — depriving workers on this continent of good jobs that can sustain a middle-class family.

Vance said the U.S. has to take a hard look at its relationship with China.

“We want to ensure our critical supply chains are controlled by America or actual allies like Canada or the U.K., as opposed to the Chinese,” Vance said in his interview with Jivani.

Vance has since endorsed Trump’s proposal to impose tariffs as high as 10 per cent on all U.S. trading partners as part of a bid to spur companies to make more products in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

In an op-ed he wrote in 2021 with former U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer — who renegotiated the trade pact with Canada and Mexico — Vance said Mexico is one reason why “America’s industrial core” has been “hollowed out.”

“These policies have made our country far less self-sufficient economically,” Vance said, suggesting further changes may be needed to the trilateral trade deal.

But Vance’s state depends on Canada — Ohio exports $21.4 billion in goods to Canada annually, according to government data. Ohio sells more goods to this country than to its next eight largest foreign markets combined.

“He’s going to fight for what’s best for America — not necessarily other parts of the world,” Chabria said of Vance. “There are some conversations to be had with the rest of the world.”

Published at Sun, 14 Jul 2024 01:06:12 +0000