Paris sewers

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Paris sewers" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Paris sewers, 2013

The sewers of Paris date back to the year 1370 when the first underground system was constructed under Rue Montmartre. Consecutive French governments enlarged the system to cover the city's population, including expansions under Louis XIV and Napoleon III, and modernisation programs in the 1990s under Mayor Jacques Chirac. The system has featured in popular culture throughout its existence, including Victor Hugo's 1862 novel, Les Misérables, and H. L. Humes's 1958 novel The Underground City.

The hydrological context in which Parisians developed their sewer system over the centuries is quite complex. Indeed, the system of waterways of the Seine and springs gave Paris its particular characteristics in terms of water circulation (or, at times, water stagnation).[1]

Up until the Middle Ages, a meander of the Seine cut a semicircle to the north of Paris, starting from what is now the eastern part of the 12th arrondissement, then passing approximately through the current Place de la Bastille and the Place de la République, then through the Saint-Lazare train station, before finally joining the main course of the Seine at the site of what is now the Pont de l'Alma (the Alma Bridge).[1]

This meander formed a depression in the northern part of Paris, which received runoff from the hills of Belleville, Montmartre, and Roule, and also fed a stream called the Ménilmontant stream. This stream, which flowed within the arc formed by the Seine's main meander, rose at the foot of the Ménilmontant hill before emptying into the Seine at current location of the Pont de l’ Alma.[1]

Besides the problem of the multitude of watercourses and springs in Paris, the city's topography posed another problem prior to the 19th century: the lack of slope.[2] With the exception of its south-southeast sector, the Parisian landscape at that time ranged from 32 to 40 meters in altitude. This low elevation difference, combined with the long distances that the sewers had to travel, "made the average slope imperceptible",[1] which greatly complicated the gravity flow of wastewater and explained the structural difficulties encountered when setting up the first sewer systems.[1]

Northern section of the main Roman sewer line Southern section of the main Roman sewer line

Romans built the first sewers in Paris (then called Lutetia).[3] They were underground and covered. They connected the baths at Cluny (Thermes de Cluny) to the Seine.[4] Vestiges of these sewers were discovered under the Cluny baths during the construction of Boulevard Saint-Michel in the 1850s.

Until the Middle Ages, the drinking water in Paris was taken from the river Seine. The wastewater was poured onto fields or unpaved streets, and finally filtered back into the Seine. Around 1200, Phillipe Auguste had the Parisian streets paved, incorporating a drain for wastewater in their middle.[2] In 1370 Hugues Aubriot, a Parisian provost had a vaulted, stone-walled sewer built in the "rue Montmartre". This sewer collected the wastewater and took it to the "Menilmontant brook". However, the wastewater was still drained in the open air.[5]

Under the reign of Louis XIV, a large ring sewer was built on the right bank, and the river Bièvre was used as a sewer for the left bank of the Seine.[1] On at least two occasions in the late 1700s, Paris refused to build an updated water system that scientists had studied.[citation needed] Women carried water from the Seine to their residences in buckets.[citation needed] Voltaire ridiculed members of the political class, saying that they "will not begrudge money for a Comic Opera, but will complain about building aqueducts worthy of Augustus".[citation needed] Louis Pasteur himself lost three children to typhoid. Under Napoleon I, the first Parisian vaulted sewer network was built. It was 30 km long.[citation needed]

Prior to 1850, the water system in Paris was inadequate for its growing population. Waste water was discharged into the Seine, a primary source of the critically limited supply of drinking water.[6] A cholera epidemic in 1832 carried off more than 18,000 Parisians out of a population of 800,000 and focused the public authorities’ attention on hygiene.[7] At the time, the bacterial cause of the disease was unknown and it was thought to be caused by noxious odors — hence, the renewed interest in building sewers.[4]

Baron Haussmann, tasked by Napoléon III to modernize the city, appointed Eugène Belgrand as Director of Water and Sewers of Paris in March 1855.[8] Belgrand embarked on an ambitious project. The tunnels he designed were intended to be clean, easily accessible for maintenance, and substantially larger than the previous underground sewers.[9] He also addressed the city's fresh water needs, building a system of aqueducts that nearly doubled the amount of water available per person per day and quadrupling the number of homes with running water.[10]

The system consisted of a double water supply network (one for drinking water and one for non drinking water) and a sewer network that had reached a length of 600 km by 1878.[11] From 1880 to 1913, efforts were made to connect all Parisian buildings to the sewers (most at the time were "connected to the city's clean water network and the rest had access to free neighborhood taps (fontaines)").[12]

Ball used to clean sewer tunnels by pushing the water in front of the ball[13]

Belgrand's successors continued extending the Parisian network: by 1914, 68% of all buildings in Paris had direct connections to the sewer.[12] Research shows that this contributed to a decline in mortality.[12] From 1914 to 1977, more than 1000 km of new sewers were built.

At the end of World War I, the 50 km² of sewage fields were no longer sufficient to protect the Seine. A general sewage treatment programme, designed to meet the needs for 50 years, was drawn up and became state-approved in 1935: this was the beginning of industrial sewage treatment.[citation needed]

The aim was to carry all the Parisian wastewater to the Achères treatment plant using a network of effluent channels. Since then, the Achères plant has continued to grow. At the end of 1970, it was one of the biggest sewage treatment plants in Europe. Its actual capacity is more than 2 million cubic metres per day.[citation needed]

This programme has been gradually upgraded: modernization of the Achères and Noisy-le-Grand (a small station farther upstream) facilities, construction of a new plant at Valenton, and expansion of the Colombes experimental station.[citation needed]

The aims of the modernization programme launched by the mayor of Paris in 1991 were to protect the Seine from storm overflow pollution by reducing the amount of untreated water discharged directly into the Seine, to reinforce the existing sewers, and to make the network to function better.[citation needed]

This project, which was reported to have cost about 152 million euros over its first five years, sought to refurbish of the old sewers in bad condition, renovate pumping stations, construct new sewers, install measuring devices and automated flow control management, improve management of solid waste and grit, and develop a computerised network management system.[citation needed]

Mannequin in the museum

The sewer system is described in Victor Hugo's 1862 novel, Les Misérables (Part 5, Jean Valjean; Book II, The Intestine of the Leviathan, ch.1, The Land Impoverished by the Sea): "... Paris has another Paris under herself; a Paris of sewers; which has its streets, its crossings, its squares, its blind alleys, its arteries, and its circulation, which is slime, minus the human form",[5] and also appears in a scene near the end of the musical based on the novel.

The sewer system plays a key part in H. L. Humes's 1958 novel, The Underground City. Humes, an American novelist, was a cofounder of the Paris Review.

The sewer features in a section of Max Brook's World War Z. Many people fled to the sewers to escape the dead, but were followed, giving rise to one of the most dangerous campaigns of the "war".

In the American television show The Honeymooners episode "The Man from Space", broadcast 31 December 1955, sewer worker Ed Norton enters dressed as an 18th-century fop, and announces that he will win the Raccoon lodge costume ball because he is dressed as "Pierre Francois de la Brioski, designer of the Paris sewers." Norton later corrected himself and said he found out that Brioski was the man who "condemned the Paris sewers."[14]

The Paris Sewer Museum (French: Musée des Égouts de Paris) is dedicated to the sewer system of Paris. Tours of the sewage system have been popular since the 1800s and are currently conducted at the sewers. Visitors are able to walk upon raised walkways directly above the sewage itself. The entrance is near the Pont de l'Alma.

• List of museums in Paris
• Catacombs of Paris

• Donald Reid (1991) Paris Sewers and Sewermen: Realities and Representations, Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-65462-5

• Media related to Égouts de Paris at Wikimedia Commons