Bonjour,

Most people who go to Paris are going to tell you and show you the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame and like that. From me, you will get Paris from the ground up. Actually, I’m going to start underground in the Paris sewer system. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been an elected official since 2001. I’m on the Board of Directors of Cupertino Sanitary District. So in my official capacity, I approached the Paris sewer tour folks and informed them about my background. I told them that I would be in town for a week and if they needed any help, I told them how they could get in touch with me. I felt that professional courtesy required it…and no, they never called me.

Paris has what might have been the world’s leading technological sewer system when it was installed. As with many such mundane items in our world, necessity was the mother of invention. People were dying off in droves from the lack of proper sanitation. Paris has had some manner of sewage systems since the Middle Ages but the current system was designed and built in 1850. Eugene Belgrand was the engineer who designed and built both Paris’s modern water system and sewage system. Prior to that, the two systems were being inadvertently intermingled which was the problem. Belgrand designed the sewer system with such things as flushing machines and grit removal systems that are still being used today.

1. I figured that as long as I was there, I might as well do a little inspecting of my own.

2. The system will always be getting upgrades, but some of their technology is very old but still effective.

3. The design allows for inspecting and repair, and by the way, I told them that the pipe on the right needs some attention….

4. Yep, it’s a river of effluent.

5. If I understood the French signage, if I were to go fishing in the stream in the prior photo, I would need a sinker this big to hold my line in place… Actually, this is a rather ingenious pipe-cleaning tool. They have various sized metal balls for cleaning their pipes. The balls are made of thick metal but they float (like a ship). So when the balls are put in a pipe, they float to the top of the pipe and the flow sends them down the line and they clean out the grit and sand in the bottom of the pipe.

Voila,

Bill