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Inside the Billion-Dollar Effort to Clean Up the Seine | Time

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Paris has a plan to make the Seine swimmable again—just in time for the 2024 Olympics.

For residents of southeast Paris, the construction vehicles rumbling back and forth behind the Austerlitz train station are a loud annoyance that has gone on for too many months. But for city officials—and countless Parisians, they hope—history is unfolding behind the cordoned-off area. After years of thwarted ambitions and vague promises, the French capital, officials say, is set to accomplish a rare feat for a major metropolis: making its once heavily polluted waterway fit for swimming again. In February, city officials invited TIME to pass through the metal turnstile behind the cordon, and

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