Eau-oh... (Part 1)
Afternoon afterdrops in the waterways of Paris
In Paris, on almost any given Sunday afternoon, especially the coldest, dreariest, most stay-at-homiest Sundays of winter, C., a beautiful woman in her mid-50s, shakes off her inertial torpors, puts a pale-blue boiler suit on over a dark-blue swimsuit, packs a special bag with other articles of special clothing, checks nearby vessel traffic on an Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder app, and, should the coasts, or rather, the canals look clear, bicycles over to the most northerly shore of the Bassin de la Villette, a large artificial lake in the 19th arrondissement. There, she meets L., an equally beautiful woman of similar age and almost identical attire. They greet each other with kisses to each cheek. Then they undress.
C.’s special bag—
—into which she puts her and L.’s valuables—keys, phones, jewellery, wallets—has a combination-lock handle, which C. attaches to her bike, which, like L.’s, she leans and locks against a tall, proud plane tree on the edge of the Quai de la Charente.
Before putting her smartphone in the special bag, however, C. has one more look at the marine traffic app. There are no AIS receiving stations near the Bassin de la Villette, so the app must rely on signal bounces off a satellite for its incoming data packets. This means that the data is not real-time; depending on where the satellites are in their orbital sweep, the information transmitted—the position, speed, course and rate of turn of vessels in the area—can be delayed by as many as three minutes.
If the live map looks good, and there are no boats or barges —
— on the immediate horizon or in the nearest locks, C. secures her phone in the special bag and, following L., climbs down a three-rung water ladder into the Bassin de la Villette. The water is cold—how cold, what that cold feels like, what it does to their bodies, what it could do to their lives, i.e., add years or end them in minutes, I’ll get to all that, but right now let’s swim out into the lake with them—
—heads up high out of the water, mindful of a host of qualia, buzzing on the dopamine overloading their brains’ reward circuitry, but mainly just on the lookout for unpleasantries, jetsam, picnic litter, a kayak, an electric self-drive rental boat or, yikes, a large barge from Lafarge, the cement manufacturer up stream in Pantin, on the Canal de l’Ourcq.
Boats and bobbing dross, however, are the least of their worries. Upon initial contact with the 4°C (39°F) water—anything below 5°C (41°F) is considered “ice water”—C. and L. reflexively gasped, sucking in between one and two litres of air. If their mouths had been under the water at the time, that amount of intake would be more than enough to fill their lungs and drown them.
Their breathing became rapid, uncontrollable. Their heart rate and blood pressure spiked.
Then the cold and pain receptors in their skin shut down. The touch receptors still functioning read the sensation that they were feeling as biting hot, like boiling water. Like ice. Like acid. Like a thousand razor sharp needles dipped in lime.
Then everything went numb.
In a few more minutes, if they didn’t get out, they would die.
About a thousand people drown every day in the world. Most of them this way, in the first few minutes of being in the water—and it doesn’t have to be ice water. Water lower in temperature than 5°C (41°F) is well within the range where fatal cardiac and pulmonary reactions can occur. Most dangerous reactions to cold water immersion peak well above that, between 15 and 10°C (50-59°F); and any prolonged immersion in water colder than 35° (the thermoneutral body temperature for the average resting undressed person) can bring on hypothermia.
Herodotus understood this: in 450 BC, the Greek historian described the destruction of the Persian military commander Mardonius’s fleet during a storm in the Aegean, off the coast of Greece near Mount Athos. The Persians lost 300 ships and 20,000 men. According to Herodotus, “The men died in various ways: some were seized by the sharks that infest the sea around Mont Athos, others were dashed onto the rocks, others drowned because they did not know how to swim, and others died of cold” (my italics). The region of the Aegean where the fleet sunk has a hot climate. Day temperatures range from 8.0°C (46.4°F) on February nights to 30.1°C (86.3°F) on July days.
In December 1790, Dr James Currie, a Scottish physician best known for his anthology and biography of Robert Burns, his medical reports on the use of water in the treatment of fever—
—and his early advocacy for the abolition of slavery, watched in horror as three crew members of an icebound sailing ship succumbed to hypothermia and drowned after falling overboard into water that was one degree Celsius warmer than the water in which C. and L. were swimming just a few paragraphs ago. Currie later carried out the first recorded experiments on the effects of cold-water immersion and hypothermia on humans, which led to the discovery of afterdrop.
To this casual observer, afterdrop is a new word, not recognised by my spell checker, with no equivalent in French (in German, however, it is known as “afterdrop”), though there is a line of street clothing in Paris with that name. The French call it collapsus de réchauffement — “warming collapse” — a continued cooling of a person’s core temperature during the initial stages of rewarming after experiencing an abnormally (typically dangerously) low body temperature. Here’s how it works: When a human body enters water colder than its normal core temperature of 37°, it constricts the peripheral blood vessels in its extremities: fingers, toes, ears, nose, penis when pertinent. This prevents further heat loss in the abdomen, thorax and skull. If the body keeps swimming, its core temperature will remain stable. But—
—when that body climbs back up the water ladder, it pumps blood back to the skin to warm it up. The skin’s temperature, being considerably colder, cools the pumped-in blood, and when this recirculates back to the core, the core’s temperature drops. Dramatically.
And this can lead to all manner of nasty.
So far, C. and L. have avoided death by cold-shock, hypothermia, and afterdrop. This is mainly because they ease into the water gently, never by a dive or a jump— and they set precise limitations on the length of their swim, based on an equation given to them by a seasoned cold-water swimmer at the Kenwood Ladies Pond in London’s Hampstead Heath: in temperatures below 10°C, spend one minute in the water for every degree over 0°C. Never more. So, this they do. The day of the above swim—January 10, 2021—they were in for 4 minutes.
They haven’t been hit by a boat, either. But are there not other dangers lurking in the Bassin de la Villette and its connecting canals? In 2016, the Canal Saint Martin was drained and its contents—bicycles (including 98 of the City’s Vélib’ rental bikes), scooters, chairs, toilets, suitcases, and shopping trolleys—were fished out.
And since 2010, more than 30 corpses have been fished out of the city’s canals. Roughly one a week is fished out of the adjoining Seine. This does not breed confidence.
The Bassin was once a drinking water reservoir, carved out of hard layers of limestone in the early 19th century to replace Paris’s previous source of precious drinking water—the Bièvre river, which, over the course of its long employment, was turned by small and large industries and intestines into a heaving, stinking plague-infested sewer and cesspool.
The water filling the new Bassin, however, came clear and clean down a new canal from the newly channelled Ourcq river, a tributary of the Marne a hundred kilometres north of the city. Two other canals, the Canal Saint-Denis and the Canal Saint-Martin, were built to link the Bassin de la Villette to the Seine, and open the canal system — 130 kilometres (81 mi) of navigable waterways — to cargo boats and barges. By and by, however, leather tanneries and tawers lined the banks of the canals, along with launderers, shoemakers, weavers, factories, sawmills, and chemical works. Pretty soon, the water was every bit as shit as the Bièvre.
Today, half of Paris’s drinking water comes from springs and wells located 80-150 km from the city, most of it via gravity, some of it by way of pumping stations and then by gravity. The other half of the city’s potable water starts as surface water, taken from near the sources of the Seine and the Marne. All of it goes through multiple layers of filtering, including activated carbon and ultra-filtration, at two treatment plants south-east of Paris — in Orly on the Seine, and Joinville on the Marne. It then circulates through Paris in underground pipes attached to the ceilings of the sewers. Next to these are another set of pipes carrying the raw, untreated water used for flushing Paris streets and gutters, washing sidewalks, watering plants, washing cars and clothes and filling fountains and artificial ponds, waterfalls, lakes, and streams. This water comes from the Ourcq canal and the Seine. It’s what you see bubbling out of Paris´s 13,000 sewer grates in street curbs—bouches de lavage—in flows ingeniously directed by rolls of cloth or carpet.
When it has finished its flushing, it flows back into the sewers, where it is then treated and discharged into the Seine. The sewer system will soon include storm drains on both sides of the Seine designed to divert excess rainwater into two wells, and from there into a colossal new water storage basin in the 13th arrondissement able to contain the equivalent of 20 Olympic swimming pools. After periods of heavy rainfall, the system will expel water collected this way — up to 46,000 cubic metres worth at a time — back into the treatment system in less than a day. When work began under then-Mayor Jacques Chirac in the early 90s, 20 million cubic metres were discharged into the Seine each year. Today the figure is two million. By 2024, when the new basin is fully operational—just in time for the Summer Olympics, when the triathlon and other water events will be held on the river—that figure is expected to be cut to 100,000.
Now, what does this mean for the quality of water suspending the benumbed bodies of C. and L.? It means it’s clean. For the last six years, bacteria levels have been well below safe norms - better than many of the country’s (or my hometown in Canada’s) favourite beaches. New treatment and sewer renovations have eliminated chemical run-off from entering the system. Phosphorus from fertilisers or poor wastewater treatment have dropped to negligible levels. Cargo boat and pleasure barge owners face 2 years imprisonment and a fine of 18,000 Euros for dumping waste. Two years ago, Lafarge got busted for dumping cement slurry out of the backs of its trucks into the Seine (they also got busted this summer for having made multimillion dollar payouts to ISIS to secure their operations in Syria, but that’s a story for next week (Eau-oh Part 2: Water to wine to war, and vice versa)). Even the Bièvre, which was buried underground in 1912, is being restored, with plans afoot to reopen stretches of it in the 5th and 13th arrondissements.
There are now 32 fish species in the canals and the Seine, up from 12 a decade ago. And you can eat them.
And last year, Arthur Germain, the son of Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, to raise public awareness of the quality of river water—and despite a 99-year-old ban on swimming in the Seine—completed a 775 kilometre (482 mile) swim of its length, from Troyes, 117 km (72.7 m) north of its source, to its terminus in Le Havre.
In 2017, his mother the mayor opened a summer swimming pool in the Bassin de la Villette, just down from where C. and L. perform their Sunday afternoon ablutions. It opened again after the COVID-19 confinement and more than 1,000 swimmers have used it daily every summer since.
C. has not been among them. Though she loves, indeed, needs, to swim, and does so in pretty much every body of water she finds herself near — oceans, seas, fjords, rivers, lakes, ponds, creeks, canals, even the odd ditch—she eschews public swimming pools, of which there are 39 in Paris. “They aren’t cold enough. And the changing rooms are filthy, filled with people’s hair and whatnot. It’s so much better outside, especially here—
—under the beautiful plane trees, at the water’s widest point, where you can swim out and no longer be within earshot of anyone. Completely isolated. And it’s cold! Which feels very good. Especially afterwards.”
Alright, get in, the water is fine. But what about the stuff coming out of the taps? Paris is very proud of the quality of its drinking water, and rightly so, but not everyone in France gets to drink it. I’ll be addressing this issue in depth next week, but in the meantime, I’ll leave you with a petition to consider. It appeared in my in-box yesterday (thank you Geoffrey Finch) so I haven’t had a chance to verify its many assertions, but based on previous research and the sources cited, they sound more-or-less legit.
At any rate, it’s a good segue to next week’s Hexagon, which will cover these issues in more detail. Plus dive deep into the murky history of bottled water in France and the collaboration of French winemakers under the Nazis in WWII. And celebrate the 80th anniversary of Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca. I hope you’ll enjoy it. And if you do, please share it.
Here’s a translation of the petition (minus the exclamation marks and the ALL-IN-UPPER-CASE SENTENCES!):
Dear Sir or Madam,
The state of the water distribution service is worrying.
In France, one in five people drink water contaminated with pesticides. These substances are probably carcinogenic according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon.1
Tap water also contains:
hydrocarbons, which can cause lesions; 2
nitrates, which play a role in cell ageing and could have a carcinogenic effect;3
aluminium oxides (in some regions of France), the accumulation of which in tissues may cause Alzheimer's and neurodegenerative diseases; 4
heavy metals, which intoxicate the body; 5
But that's not all. The 878,000 km of pipes are a sieve. This is largely due to rust. Leaks in rusty pipes cause considerable water losses. More than one million m3 of water are discharged into the environment every day, the equivalent of 500 Olympic swimming pools. 6
The continuing drought in France since the spring has further exacerbated the problem. After a dry spring and summer, 86 French departments are still on drought alert in autumn. Unless there is a very wet winter, the water tables will not return to their level before 2023.7 Some departments, such as the Côtes d'Armor, will run out of water by the end of October. Despite these difficulties, the giant bottled water companies continue to take large quantities of water from France's most beautiful rivers. 8
To respond to the water crisis, the answers provided by the public authorities are limited and short term: individuals are encouraged to consume less water; farmers are partially restricted; bottled water distributors' withdrawals are regulated. 9
Water is a common good
But this is not enough. If nothing is done, you will no longer have quality drinking water at your tap, or even no water at all, like the users in Martinique. We must act now. Because the problem of water requires investment. It is complex. It deserves a global vision.
We are asking the government for a strategic plan on drinking water. So that we don't run out of water on tap. So that our tap water is not contaminated. So that water, our common good, is preserved. So that waste and misuse of water stops.
We specifically ask Elisabeth Borne's government to:
1/ the establishment of a national water strategy over 10, 20 and 50 years;
2/ the banning of large agricultural water basins which allow large quantities of water to evaporate;
3/ increased regulation of water withdrawals by bottled water distributors;
4/ major investments in water pipes and distribution systems
5/ the reduction of the consumption of useless and dangerous drugs whose residues pollute our rivers and streams;
6/ Continuation and acceleration of efforts in the field of agriculture: stop intensive breeding that pollutes rivers, stop water-intensive corn crops, etc.
7/ The implementation of natural water purification systems wherever possible to limit the use of chemical treatments in the water distribution system.
Support this initiative and sign the petition!
At the time of this writing, they had 19,475 signatures.
*****
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I believe the source of the Seine is not in Troyes but in a remote valley owned by the City of Paris next to a tiny village called Source-Seine.
All the facts and a vey good read!