It was an American modernist poet who captured best the ancient, elemental status of rivers. In one of his best-loved poems, Wallace Stevens celebrated their “third commonness with light and air / A curriculum, a vigor, a local abstraction”. Life-supporting and place-defining, the great rivers of the world have nurtured and sustained our cities, but more latterly been blighted by the toxic legacy of industrialisation.
The successful staging of Olympic events in a cleaned-up River Seine therefore deserves to be seen as a social and environmental milestone, as well as a sporting one. The remarkable spectacle of triathlon competitors diving from the Pont Alexandre III, as the Eiffel Tower loomed large on a blue-skied summer morning, will take some beating as a signature image of Paris 2024.
Given that intense summer rainstorms almost derailed the event, generating contaminated overflow from the city’s water pipes, that scene will have been greeted with immense relief by the city’s socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo. It was Ms Hidalgo who put the reclamation of the Seine at the heart of Paris’s Olympic bid in 2016 – a $1.5bn project that only just came in on time. Her green ambition has been justly rewarded by the emergence of the Seine as a example of what a 21st-century urban river can become.
More investment may be needed to cope with the challenge of Paris’s Napoleonic-era sewage system. But three urban beaches are due to open next year, including under the Eiffel Tower and next to the Hotel de Ville. Almost 30 more, equipped with parasols and river pools, are being planned for the suburbs and to the east of the capital. As global heating delivers hotter summer temperatures, the availability of cool bathing areas in the heart of the city will be an invaluable public good. Wildlife is returning to the cleaner water, including catfish and crustaceans, shrimps, sponges and perch.
Beyond leisure and recreation, there are also plans to develop the Seine as a major carbon-free transport route for businesses. The European Green Deal envisages a doubling of barge traffic across the continent by 2050, moving goods off the roads and on to rivers, which currently account for less than 2% of freight transport. From Paris to Le Havre, where the Seine meets the English Channel, France’s main port operator, Haropa, is investing more than €1bn to make it fit for that purpose.
The last century appeared to turn its back on the flowing arteries that pumped life through its cities. Rivers were shunted into economic irrelevance by the rise of road and rail, and used as a dumping ground for the toxic detritus of modernity.
But Paris offers further evidence that a necessary comeback is under way. Restoration of Munich’s Isar began a quarter of a century ago, transforming it into a recreational hub and spectacularly renewing habitats for fauna and flora. Switzerland has restored more than 300km of degraded rivers, and cities such as Basel, Zurich and Geneva have made their waterways accessible and safe.
The notorious state of Britain’s sewage-infested rivers has become a modern scandal. The recent completion of the Thames Tideway project – a £5bn super sewer designed to divert raw sewage away from the river – is at least a start, but there is a very long way to go. London should take inspiration from the City of Light, where the “vigor” observed by Stevens has been restored to one of the most famous stretches of water in the world.
