Olympic Games-2024: the Austerlitz basin inaugurated, tribute to the dead worker

The Austerlitz rainwater and wastewater retention basin, supposed to limit pollution of the Seine in the event of storms, was inaugurated Thursday, May 2, three months before the Olympic Games events planned in the river, and a tribute was paid. returned to Amara Dioumassy, the worker who died during the construction site.

This basin dug underground between the Austerlitz station, the historic entrance to the La Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital and the aerial metro should make it possible to accommodate up to 50.000 m3 of waste and rainwater in the event of heavy rains, and thus prevent this polluted water from ending up in the river.

The equivalent of 20 Olympic swimming pools, repeats the Paris town hall, which had this cylinder of 100 m in diameter and 50 m deep built, for a final budget of around 30 million euros.

It is a major work of the Swimming Plan, in which the authorities have invested around 1,4 billion euros to allow open water swimmers and triathletes to compete in their Olympic event in the Seine, then for the general public to enjoy. swim there from summer 2025.

“If we are there, it is because there were the Olympic and Paralympic Games (JOP)”, which will allow us to “realize our childhood dream” of “being able to swim in this river in which we swam ago hundred years,” declared Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

The Minister of Sports and Olympic Games, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, spoke of a “tremendous advance” which will benefit the “biological balance” of the Seine.

The pool is a “lever to allow us to approach this summer’s competitions with confidence,” declared Tony Estanguet, president of the Organizing Committee for these Olympics which will take place from July 26 to August 11.

Suspense nevertheless remains over the good performance of these events, after the cancellation in August 2023 of several rehearsals due to water quality thresholds being exceeded, particularly after heavy rain.

The stormy episode of Wednesday evening, which hit Île-de-France, did not make it possible to test the basin, which will be put into service "between mid and end of May" after final tests, indicated Samuel Colin -Canivez, the major works manager of the Parisian sanitation network.

Ms. Hidalgo and Ms. Oudéa-Castéra paid tribute to Amara Dioumassy, the team leader who died on the site in June 2023, hit by a construction truck that was reversing.

“We have and will continue to support Amara’s family,” said Ms. Hidalgo.

On Saturday, around a hundred union activists and members of his family paid tribute to him, deploring the lack of recognition and support from the Paris town hall, the project owner of the site.