Cape Town - While both are world-renowned for their beauty, Cape Town and Paris discovered they have even more in common when it comes to water management challenges and water rehabilitation strategies, particularly regarding wastewater discharge directly into their rivers.
This was evident in a bilateral meeting held between the two cities on Tuesday in which the City’s water team was afforded the chance to engage and learn about Paris’ massive rehabilitation mission to clean up the River Seine and ensure it was safe for recreational use before the 2024 Olympic Games.
During the meeting, a presentation was made by Anita Ravlic and Paul Kennouche, from the City of Paris sanitation and water service, that elaborated on possible lessons Cape Town could take away from their experience in rehabilitating the Seine River, which was so polluted that people were not legally allowed to swim in it.
Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said: “I enjoyed joining the deputy mayor of Paris and her water and sanitation teams learning about their impressive programme to clean up the River Seine, which has been closed for swimming for a century. Many of their learnings and efforts we can apply here in Cape Town’s rivers.”
Recently, the French capital has been making massive strides to turn the “open-air sewer” into a recreational space.
Alex Lansdowne, chairperson of the mayoral advisory committee on water quality in wetlands and waterways, said: “The Seine River, which runs through Paris, suffers from hundreds of years of heavy pollution … In Cape Town, while we have 22 river basins and a very different socio-economic context, we share Paris’ ambition to restore water quality for future generations and biodiversity.”
Lansdowne said after the engagement he was optimistic that they were on the right track with their R13 billion investment into sanitation infrastructure over the next 10 years.
Water and sanitation acting Mayco member Siseko Mbandezi said key takeaways from the engagement were the importance of identifying all sources of pollution and of political commitment, including budget allocations – in the case of Paris it was a decision to hold the Olympic Games and in the case of Cape Town, it was the mayor’s priority programme aimed at improving inland water quality.