User:Objectif.traduction.anglais/Syndicat interdépartemental pour l'assainissement de l'agglomération parisienne

The SIAAP (Syndicat interdépartemental pour l'assainissement de l'agglomération parisienne) is a public administrative institution in charge of the wastewater treatment for nearly 9 million Greater Paris inhabitants, rainwater and water polluted by the industries of the region Ile de France in order to return to the Seine and the Marne a water allowing a development of the natural environment.

The SIAAP, with at least its 1,700 agents, has the goal to clean up nearly 2.5 million m³ of water, carried by 440 km of outfalls and treated by its six water treatment plants.

History

The creation of the SIAAP

The administration of sanitation issues was for a long time under the responsibility of the former department of the Seine. It was under the control of a prefectural authority.

Major changes occurred with the administrative reform of 1964 supported by Paul Delouvrier. Delouvrier was the general delegate of the district of the Paris region in 1961 as the district created in the summer of 1961 to be finally effective on 1 January 1968 then the first prefect of the Paris region from 1966 to 1969.

This reform divided the former departments of the Seine and Seine-et-Oise into seven new departments. The SIAAP emerged also from the adoption of the Schéma directeur d'aménagement et d'urbanisme de la région de Paris (the SDAURP) in 1965 that led to the creation of new cities, new urban centres, prefectures and universities all around the Paris region.

Between 1962 and 1968, the budget for sanitation was 256 million of francs, which was certainly a large budget, but in comparison, the budgets allocated to the construction of the regional express network and road infrastructure were much important. At the same time, the Comité national de l'eau (National Water Committee) was created by a decree on September 3, 1965. This committee depended on the office of the Prime Minister (at the time of its creation Georges Pompidou).

These changes led to the establishment in 1970-71 of the SIAAP, the French public administrative institution created by the new departments of Paris, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne. The 15 September 1970 Official Journal of the French Republic issue (or in French the Journal officiel de la République française) attested the decision of 31 August to create a real public service dedicated to sanitation by registering its creation on that date.

However, it was not until 16 February 1971 that a convention between Paris and the SIAAP was signed. On January-February 1972 an agreement was created between the SIAAP and the new departments of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne. It is a real territorial alliance between initially four departments, wishing to leave the balance of power between Paris and its suburbs. The Parisian population was yet already lower than in the suburbs (in 1968, it is estimated that there were 2.5 million Parisians compared to 3 million living in the suburbs).

The headquarters remained for a time within the City Hall of Paris. The Board of Directors itself consists of twelve councillors from Paris and fifteen councillors coming from the Paris Petite Couronne.

Its field of action subsequently extended to part of the departments of Yvelines (between 10 April and 15 May 1975), the Val-d'Oise (16 February 1973) and Essonne (agreement signed on 18 July 1975).

The development of the SIAAP

The SIAAP was thus born from the gathering of the sanitation services of the departments of Paris (75), Hauts-de-Seine (92), Seine-Saint-Denis (93) and Val-de-Marne (94) in 1970 and 1971.

In addition to these four departments, the SIAAP was then, strengthened through agreements signed by with inter-municipal unions, by the transport and waste water treatment of new 180 municipalities in the departments of the Val-Oise, Essonne, Yvelines and Seine-et-Marne.

One of the many difficulties of the 1970s was the management and management of storm water and the increase of pollution in the Paris basin. Philippe Tollu, president of SIAAP from 1971 to 1972 and from 1975 to 1977, expresses in a law of July 10, 1976 all the stakes of SIAAP: "(...) We will finally express the wish that this work can return to our waterways a new purity. We hope that, through it, the river, the rivers, which with its hills, have conferred its grace and nobility on the Parisian site, will escape a degradation leading them to this sad condition of open sewer, which becomes the fate of too many streams, in a civilization that calls itself into question. We hope that the banks of the Seine and the Marne will one day become these places of stroll and reverie, whose paintings by our impressionists have left us a nostalgia that must become for us the source of hope. »

In 1980, the Experimental Center of Doves modernized itself and became truly the Centre de Recherche Interdépartemental pour le Traitement des Eaux Résiduaires (the Inter-departmental Research Center for Wastewater Treatment or CRITER), a place where in laboratories; scientists and researchers are working to find the best possible sanitation methods.

In the 1980s, the "Seine Propre" plan started from 17 April 1984, if not 25 June 1985, when a "special water contract" issued. This "contract" was not between only the SIAAP, the French State, the Regional Council of Ile-de-France but also the Agence financière de bassin Seine-Normandie. The aim was to develop public policy interventions at the scale of the local authorities, in this case the Ile-de-France region. The "Seine Propre" programme therefore aimed at improving the access to good water, improving therefore the living conditions for the people of Ile-de-France. It would allowed the establishment and construction of many public facilities. For example, the construction of the Sèvres-Acheres collector, a branch of Nanterre, began at the exact same time as the plan. More broadly, the SIAAP had the real objective of improving the quality of the waters of the Seine and the Marne by 1994.

It was also from the late 1980s to the 2010s that all of the water treatment plants underwent renovations to modernize themselves, integrating them into an increasingly urbanized environment to take into account local residents.

In 1987, under the eyes of Jacques Chirac, then Mayor of Paris, and Daniel Méraud, director of the SIAAP from 1984 to 2001, fish releases in the Seine were organized. The following year, in 1988, a communication campaign launched under the name "Nous faisons revive the Seine" (“We revive the Seine”) with the distribution of many stickers. The objective was clear: to offer a Seine where fish can swim but also the Ile-de-France inhabitants as well!

On September 1990, the SIAAP had planned to build a fifth section of the water treatment plant of Achères, also called Achères V. Nevertheless, many residents were opposed to it, especially because of the already significant surface area of the site. The protection of the environment has also become an issue that was increasingly present in the media. A sensitivity formed among the Ile-de-France inhabitants. Michel Rocard, the then mayor of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a city nearby the plant and member of the government, also joined the opposition. Ultimately, the project dropped.

In 1991, a new sanitation master plan was adopted following a study by the Seine-Normandie water agency concerning the SIAAP collection area: this was what was called the scenario C. This scenario C tended to compensate for deficiencies such as the issue of discharges into the environment in rainy weather or the real issue of the quality of the Seine. It was updated in 2003 and again in 2012.

In 2006, was founded the association l 'Observatoire des usagers de l'assainissement en Ile-de-France (Obusass-IDF), whose the first president is none other than the back then mayor of Achères, Alain Outreman. The association advocates for the State and the society to recognise the access of water as a fundamental right and making it present in the core of French law. They also plead for the creation of a "water allowance", which is paid by the family allowance funds.

The SIAAP is administered by 33 departmental advisors appointed by the 4 departments that founded it. These elected members make up the Board of Directors that deliberates on decisions that commit to the future of the SIAAP and sets its guidelines, the implementation of which is steered by the general management.

Its network now covers 8 departments and at least 300 communes in the Paris basin, including 180 communes in the Grande Couronne (including the Val d'Oise, the Seine-et-Marne, the Essonne and the Yvelines). The municipalities themselves divide also into 15 intercommunal unions with a single purpose of sanitation (Sivu).

The SIAAP water treatment plants

The SIAAP has six treatment plants in the Paris region:

-         Seine Aval, also called Achères: The history of Achères originates back to before the creation of the SIAAP as such in the early 1970s. Before the construction of the plant, the City of Paris acquired in 1902 the estates (the Domaine des Fonceux, Achères and Picquenard) to be able to create the agricultural park of Achères dedicated to the cultivation of the spreading (the marketing of crops cultivated by spreading will be prohibited by a prefectural decree on 30 April 2001).

The first phase of Achères (Achères I) was commissioned on 5 October 1940, the second phase (Achères II) was built from 1962 to 1965 for a start-up on 22 January 1966, the third phase (Achères III) from 1969 to 1971 and the fourth phase (Achères IV) 1975 to 1977, this time in 1978. The Achères V project dropped on September 1990.

It is now the largest sewage treatment plant in Europe, second in the world after Chicago.

-         Seine Centre (in Colombes): Rebuilt from 1993 to 1998, the Seine Centre plant was originally an experimental station for research, notably to replace spraying while allowing new ways of treating wastewater. From 1920 to 1993, industrial laboratories and pilots used for wastewater researches. These researches stopped in 1993, year of the destruction of the old outdoor basins in favour of the creation of the Seine Centre, an indoor plant and no longer an open-air one, as was the one of Achères.

The Colombes site also includes a historic hall (formerly known as Factory B) built in 1901. It is a symmetrical copy of another hall (Factory A) that was destroyed following a Second World War bombing. The historic hall is now known as the Cité de l'Eau et de l'Assainissement  (opened in 2007). Offices, training rooms for the SIAAP agents, an Infothèque (a library allowing access to several books on sanitation and resources for the training of staff) and workshops for visiting school students allowing them an introduction to the techniques of sanitation and the issue of waste treatment can be found within this building.

-         Seine Amont (in Valenton); Created in 1987, it initially wanted to purify 150 000 m3/day. The extension built in 1992 (Valenton 1B) and 1999 (Valenton II) allowed, according to a 2006 research, the purification of 600 000 m3/day in dry weather or up to 1 500 000 m3/day in rainy weather. It was designed with the objective of unloading a little Achères, having a radius of action in the Val-de-Marne, the Bièvre valley, a part of the Hauts-de-Seine and the Seine-Saint-Denis but also some communes of the valleys of Orge, Yvette and Yerres.

-         Marne Aval (in Noisy-le-Grand): Built in 1976 and finally rebuilt and put back into service in 2009, the Marne Aval plant treats the waters of sixteen municipalities of the Seine-Saint-Denis and the Seine-et-Marne with an estimated capacity of 75,000 m3 per day. Originally, it was a medium-load activated sludge plant, which, as in Achères, treated only carbon pollution. A unit of nitrification by fixed crops was added in 1993. The sludge treatment was done by incineration in a rotary sunbed furnace. As the installations became obsolete and new regulations became mandatory, SIAAP opted for a complete reconstruction of the site.

-         Seine Grésillons (in Triel-sur-Seine): Seine Grésillons was created in 2007 and opened the following year, in 2008. It reduces the concentration and volume of water to be treated at Seine Aval. Its scope of action is mainly in the municipalities of Val d'Oise and Yvelines. Since the plant was expanded in 2013, at least 300,000 m3 of wastewater is treated each day. Its creation also led to the shutdown of the Carrières-sous-Poissy plant (itself born from a sanitation scheme in 1968) which became obsolete over time. Seine Grésillions also has a unit dedicated solely to the treatment of carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen.

-         The Seine Morée plant (in Le Blanc-Mesnil), created in 2014, is the most recent of the SIAAP plants. It allows wastewater treatment in the municipalities of Aulnay-sous-Bois, Sevran, Tremblay, Vaujours, Villepinte, part of the Blanc-Mesnil and part of the Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport.

The SIAAP’s clean-up missions apply to domestic wastewater, industrial-polluted water and storm water.

Domestic wastewater (kitchen, bathroom and toilets) accounts for 85% of the volumes treated by SIAAP. These waters contain three elements that lower the oxygen content of the river and unbalance biodiversity:

-         carbon (fats, small organic debris and solid waste);

-         phosphorus (detergents such as laundry, dishwashing and home maintenance);

-         nitrogen derived mainly from urine.

Industrial-polluted waters account for 5% of the volumes processed by SIAAP, but are among the most complicated to clean up. These industrial waters contain according to the sectors:

-         toxic products (solvents, miscellaneous chemicals, heavy metals and hydrocarbons);

-         hot water (cooling circuits for thermal power stations).

The conditions of acceptability of industrial water in the network and the treatment plants are present within the decrees created by the consultation between the municipalities, the departments and the SIAAP. The industrial establishments responsible for the largest discharges are encouraged to pre-treat their wastewater. Finally, the treatment of industrial water is subject to a specific fee taking its volume and degree of pollution into account.

As it drips down the roofs and roadways, the rainwater is loaded with zinc, oil for emptying, fuels, heavy metals and animal solid waste requiring special treatment.