Sewers of Paris

The sewers of Paris are not any more the cesspool in which Jean Valjean in 1832 lost. It is since Haussmann a well maintained network which doubles each Parisian street of an underground gallery. It counts: 2300 kilometers of galleries.

Characteristics of the network

The characteristic of the sewerage system of Paris holds in three indissociable points:
  • It is a unit network
  • It is a gravitating network
  • It is a network worth visiting

A network worth visiting

The network of the sewers of Paris includes/understands 2.400 kilometers of galleries maintained by teams sewermen. A computing system, TIGER (computerized Treatment of the management of the network of the sewers), centralizes information on the physical status of the works, that the sewermen check on the spot with portable terminals. They inspect each portion of the network at least twice a year.

A section of the network of the sewers is opened to the public with the bridge of Alma. This “museum of the sewers” accommodates close to: 90000 visitors per annum. The course gives information on the history and the operation of the network of the Parisian sewers.

Management of waste water

The cleansing of waste water is ensured since 1970 by the Syndicat interdépartemental for the cleansing of the Paris and its suburbs (SIAAP). This organization covers the departments Hauts-de-Seine, of the Seine-Saint-Denis, the the Valley-of-Marne and Paris, like 180 communes of the other departments of the Île-de-France. It transports each day 2,5 to 3 million m of waste water and the draft in four factories of purification before rejecting them into the Seine. The SIAAP employs: 1551 agents, including 963 Civil servant S.

History of the sewers of Paris

The old network

The first Parisian sewers were dug by the Romans under current the Boulevard Saint-Michel.

With the the Middle Ages, the sewers are a long time with open sky. The first sewers with open ditches appear at the 14th century. The network develops especially at the time of the provost Hugues Aubriot, who makes build in 1374 the first sewer arched and built under the Rue Montmartre.

The sewers develop little by little, but it is necessary to await the great epidemic of plague and cholera of 1832 to see adopting by the city a great policy of cleansing.

The modern network

It is Eugene Belgrand which, under the impulse of the prefect Haussmann, undertakes starting from 1854 the vast building site of cleansing from which is resulting the current sewerage system. They install collectors under the lately bored arteries (Boulevard of Sébastopol, Rue of Rivoli).

The buildings are gradually constrained by the law to pour their rain water and housewives in the network of the sewers: it is mains drainage, which means that no waste water must be rejected directly in the Seine.

The sewers themselves do not emerge any more in the Seine inside Paris but far downstream, with Asnières-sur-Seine. For that purpose, the networks of left bank meet with the Pont of Alma, where they pass under the Seine by a siphon.

The pollution of the Seine by the discharge of the sewers pushes the successors of Haussmann to set up a system of spreading. The collectors are prolonged until Achères where the sewages are exposed on sewage farms.

As from 1930, water is treated in factories of purification. Most important is that of Achères, but other stations are installed on other sites: Noisy-the-Large Valenton (94), (93), Doves (92).

Evolution length of the network (Sources: and)

Visit

In Paris, the sewers can be visited (access to the bridge of Alma, out of left bank of the Seine). The sewermen are ready to show you very last technologies and to tell you the history of those.

Lost objects

There exists a service of recovery of the objects lost in the gullies.

Sewers of Paris in the literature

Sewers of Paris to the cinema

Sources

  • Town hall of Paris - Direction of Cleanliness and Water (DPE) Section of cleansing of the town of Paris (SAP)
  • Parisian sewers
  • Museum of the sewers
  • Atlas of underground Paris , under the direction of Alain Clément and Gilles Thomas, Parigramme, 2001
  • the SIAAP

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