BOLD MOVE, MADAME

Paris Mayor Swims in ‘Post-Toxic’ River Ahead of Olympics

Anne Hidalgo’s early morning swim comes after some threatened to defecate in the water in protest over the cleanup’s perceived failures and exorbitant costs.

Turds be damned, it seemed nothing could stop Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo taking a dip in the city’s famously filthy river Seine this morning. Swimming in the waters has been banned for around a century, but since 2015 organizers have sunk about $1.5 billion in a bid to get them clean enough for the Olympics, due to kick off next Friday. Though Hidalgo’s dip fulfills a promise she’d made to prove the river was safe ahead of then, it comes after daily tests were still showing unsafe levels of E. coli (yes, the fecal bacteria) as late as early June. It’s also around that time #jechiedanslaSeine (or “I’m pooping in the Seine”) started trending on social media, as users threatened to defecate in the water to protest the heavy bill and perceived failures of the cleanup effort. Whether any dirty demos actually took place, officials say sufficient improvements to water quality have still been made for Olympic swimming events to go ahead as planned.

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