As global temperatures continue to rise, it's more important than ever that we have blue spaces to cool off. But are we looking after our seas, lakes and rivers as we should?
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00:00 The Seine River in Paris has long been mythologized in art and literature,
00:05 but the reality is slightly less romantic and a little more...smelly.
00:10 Since 1923, it has been illegal to swim in the river because of poor water quality.
00:16 Yet with the Olympics to be held in Paris next year,
00:19 the French government has embarked on a huge clean-up effort.
00:23 So France's murky waters are making headlines across Europe,
00:27 but what about water pollution in the rest of the EU?
00:31 According to a recent bathing water report from the European Environment Agency
00:40 and the European Commission, things seem pretty positive.
00:44 The report is a yearly publication that assesses the cleanliness of seas, lakes and rivers.
00:52 The key message of the report is that we have very good bathing water quality in Europe.
00:58 We have 86% of the designated bathing sites are in excellent quality
01:07 and very few are in poor quality.
01:10 The study looks at nearly 22,000 officially designated bathing sites in the EU,
01:18 as well as sites in Albania and Switzerland.
01:21 Researchers monitored the presence of E. coli and intestinal enterococci in the water.
01:27 These are bacteria found in fecal waste that can cause waterborne diseases.
01:32 The good news is that minimum quality standards were met at 95.9% of sites,
01:39 with Cyprus, Austria and Greece topping the cleanliness list.
01:44 The bad and perhaps surprising news, this excellent label doesn't mean there aren't raw sewage spills.
01:52 If you don't have a separation between the sewage water and the rainwater,
01:57 which you don't have in most cities, then when it rains,
02:02 you have and you don't have enough storage for all the sewage
02:06 and you have to release the untreated sewage directly into the water.
02:12 This is actually taken care of in the bathing water directive,
02:18 meaning that if you have a system set up for warning bathers at the sites that could be affected by this,
02:27 it's still possible to obtain the excellent quality.
02:32 The EU has a piece of legislation called the Bathing Water Directive
02:36 that obliges member states to monitor bathing water every year.
02:41 Usually, countries should take four samples from a site per season,
02:45 but they are allowed to ignore readings taken during temporary periods of pollution.
02:50 This is provided that they inform the public and take measures to clean the polluted water.
02:57 Polluting incidents can happen because, as we've heard,
03:02 the flaw of the common combined sewer system is that rainwater and sewage run into the same pipe.
03:09 And when there is heavy rainfall, companies in many EU countries
03:14 release this untreated waste into our rivers and seas.
03:17 This ensures it doesn't come back into our homes.
03:21 That said, releasing raw sewage isn't always an infrequent emergency solution.
03:30 Latvia closed beaches this summer after an accident at a wastewater treatment plant,
03:35 and pollution warnings were issued for bathers in countries like Ireland, Spain and France.
03:41 In Ireland, raw sewage from the equivalent of around 54,000 people in 26 towns and villages
03:50 still flowed into the environment every day in mid-2023.
03:55 Professor Luisa Campos explains that sewers can't handle a lot of rain
04:00 because of ageing infrastructure and limited storage capacity.
04:04 The water companies are not investing in the infrastructures where they should be.
04:09 So I think the priority for the water companies, I would say that they need first
04:15 to reduce as much as possible the discharge of untreated wastewater.
04:23 She says that aside from increasing sewage storage and treatment capacity,
04:28 one way to reduce spills is to collect excess rainfall.
04:32 Professor Campos also stresses that data is key to keeping people safe.
04:38 One thing important is improving monitoring, monitoring of the discharge,
04:43 not only the water quality of the sewage that is being discharged,
04:48 but also water quality of the rivers to understand how the dilution,
04:53 the dilution of the treated sewage that is being discharged into the receiving water is behaving,
05:00 so that we can understand better what is the extension of the river that is still contaminated,
05:07 so we can create signaling there, so people are aware that that area cannot be used for swimming.
05:17 Many beaches do put up flags to warn the public about pollution, but there is no uniform system.
05:23 So the big question is, how do we know when it's safe to swim?
05:28 The answer is that bathing isn't a risk-free activity,
05:36 but the best approach is to follow the advice of local authorities,
05:40 which often means avoiding the water after heavy rainfall.
05:45 We should also keep in mind that because of the worsening climate crisis,
05:49 water quality is set to become an even greater problem.
05:53 More flooding will cause more storm overflows,
05:56 and hot spills will increase the concentration of pollutants in our water.
06:01 So with this threat looming, the EU is racing to find solutions.
06:07 [Music]
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