A costly and complex clean-up is resuscitating the River Seine just in time for it to play a starring role in the 2024 Paris Olympics

By Associated Press

April 11, 2023, at 2:22 a.m.

Swans stand in the River Seine in Paris, Wednesday, April 5, 2023. A costly and complex clean-up is resuscitating the River Seine just in time for it to play a starring role in the 2024 Paris Olympics. The city and its region are rushing to make the Seine's murky waters swimmable, so it can genuinely live up to its billing as the world’s most romantic river. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)CHRISTOPHE ENA

PARIS (AP) — Even before he has dipped his toes into the murky waters of Paris ' famous but forbidden River Seine, French triathlete Thibaut Rigaudeau is already fielding questions from disbelieving friends.

"Are you scared of swimming in the Seine?" he says they ask him. “It looks disgusting.'"

For decades, it was. Though immortalized in art, literature and song, and cherished by lovers who whisper sweet nothings or tearfully part on the privacy of its banks, the river was ecologically dying. It was too toxic for most fish and for swimmers, largely useful only as a waterway for goods and people or as a watery grave for discarded bicycles and other trash. Swimming in the Seine has, with some exceptions, been off-limits since 1923.

Now, however, its admittedly unappetizing green-brown waters hide a tale of rebirth.

A costly and complex cleanup is resuscitating the Seine just in time for it to play a starring role in the 2024 Paris Olympics and, after that, for it to genuinely live up to its billing as the world's most romantic river, one that's actually fit again for people. And in a warming world, a renewed ability to take cooling dips in the river should help France's capital remain liveable during increasingly frequent heat waves. It possibly might also inspire other cities to invest in reclaiming their waterways.