Despite a £1.1 billion clean-up operation, unsafe levels of E.coli were recently found in the river three weeks running, from late June and into July.
Ms Oudea-Castera, however, is looking on the bright side and has promised to keep swimming in the river throughout this week to show that all is well. The water is ‘depolluted, that’s for sure!’ she told French radio. Let’s hope, for the sake of her health, that she is right.
For the time being, Seine waters are — just — within safe levels, but little else in the French capital augurs well for the Games, due to start in just over a week.
Paris suffers an Olympic breakdown:
A growing migrant crisis, sewage-filled Seine, a bedbug infestation, alienated residents
... and comparisons to a 'warzone'
Only ten days or so ago, hooded and masked protesters were running through the city’s streets, throwing flares, smashing property and burning electric bicycles.
Violence erupted following the second round of President Emmanuel Macron’s ill-judged — and ill-tempered — snap elections in which a coalition headed by hard-Left Jean-Luc Melenchon successfully stopped Marine Le Pen’s National Rally from winning a majority.
The street cleaners had barely finished clearing the smouldering ashes from the riots following the first round, which the hard-Right National Rally had won.
Tear gas was used to disperse the crowd and the historic Place de la Republique was left littered with piles of rubbish. Spent firework casings surrounded the bronze statue of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, who holds aloft an olive branch, the ancient gesture of peace.
Demonstrations on such a scale have not been seen in Paris for years. And with the Olympics looming, the timing couldn’t be worse.
A hundred years have passed since the city last hosted the Games and organisers — who have lavished a reported £8 billion on preparations — are predicting an influx of 15 million visitors, with eight million spectators’ tickets sold at the fastest rate in history.
Despite police efforts to bus thousands of homeless people out of the city and into towns around the country, there are still many of them on the streets of Paris
But for the 2.1 million who live here, discontent — and public negativity about the Olympics — is at an all-time high.
A recent opinion poll found that 52 per cent of Parisians were considering leaving the city for the summer, joining the mass exodus from what many have taken to calling ‘L’enfer’ or ‘Hell’.. . ."
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