Improvised Drain Meet 2009
Somewhere under Paris, two Russians, one American, one Aussie, and two Frenchmen try to keep their balance in a dirty, wet, and slippery round concrete pipe. There are just two torches for the six of us, and the less equipped ones wear sandals. While the Brits are still thinking about a location for their next International Drain Meet, we’re improvising our own!
We are deep inside a nearly finished storm water storage tunnel which will prevent the nearby drains from overflowing into the Seine during heavy rains. The stored water will progressively be treated once the weather gets better.
The system is made of two huge 100 feet deep wells located nearly 2 kilometres away from each other. A massive 22 feet wide tunnel connects them together. A secondary pipe runs underneath the Seine to collect the streams from two drains located on the other bank. Several rooms with watertight doors will contain the hardware to control the pumps and the flap gates of the network.
Cat, Olivier, and I visited these tunnels twice before (that’s when we took the photos). The access is in an industrial area where an unlikely amount of moustachioed gents in tight shorts like to hang out. We understood pretty quickly what they were after. The opposite is probably untrue.
Photos from the "Improvised Drain Meet 2009" album
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