Supplying Paris with drinking water: this was the primary objective of the Canal de l’Ourcq, inaugurated in 1822 and whose bicentenary is being celebrated this year. But the emperor who wanted this connection between the Ourcq river and the capital and decided to build it by decree on May 19, 1802 (29 Floréal of Year X) never saw it finished: Napoleon Bonaparte died one year before the completion of the works.
Previously, the water came either from the Seine, abundant but dirty, or from the Bièvre river or from Belleville streams, which were pure but insufficient. So, only 56 fountains distributed water in the capital, at certain times of the day, for more than 500,000 Parisians.
An ambitious project
The emperor decided that “the canal would also be established to give passage to medium-sized boats”, a project that Francis I had already thought of two centuries earlier. The Ourcq river passes through the forest of Retz, near Villers-Cotterêts (Aisne) and the cereal fields of the Duchy of Valois. The canal will make it possible to transport wood and cereals to Paris.
Artist’s impression of the Saint-Martin barrier and the Ourcq basin in the 19th century. Bridgeman Images
Ambitious, Napoleon I saw things big and planned the construction of two other canals to shorten the journeys of boats crossing the capital. The Saint-Denis canal was inaugurated in 1821 and the Saint-Martin canal in 1825.
“When we have made the Ourcq canal navigable, we will extend it to that of Saint-Quentin which will be completed in three years and we will have direct communication between Paris and Antwerp (Belgium), until another will be established by the Aisne and the Meuse, between Paris and Rotterdam (Netherlands),” the emperor had foreseen. Finally, the Canal de l’Ourcq will be 108 km long, 97 km between Paris and Mareuil-sur-Ourcq (Oise), plus 11 km of canalized river between Mareuil and Port aux Perches (Aisne).
Napoleon put at the head of this project an architect he knew well: Pierre-Simon Girard led the modernization works of the city and the port of Alexandria during the Egyptian campaign of 1798. For the Canal de l ‘Ourcq, he quantifies the project at more than 43 million francs at the time.
How to finance this project? A loan of 7 million gold francs and the attribution – a tax applied to all merchandise that passed through the gates of Paris – were not enough. So Napoleon turned to wine: he established a tax of 1.20 francs per hectolitre entering the capital for ten years.
Old people, children and prisoners work on the site
Then there is the question of manpower. “The Napoleonic wars mobilize men. Also, to carry out the work, we recruit old people, children”, explains Jean-Jacques Brilland in his book “My walks of Am’Ourcq”. After the victorious Prussian campaign, more than 300 prisoners will be assigned to the construction of the canal, in the Saint-Denis wood area.
After its construction, it was the management of the Ourcq canal that posed a problem. It was ceded to a concession which took care of the works and maintenance in exchange for tolls and navigation revenues for ninety-nine years. After fifty-eight years, the city of Paris bought the canal concession in 1876.
The golden age of river transport
All these efforts are rewarded. Thanks to the future canal, Napoleon made the distribution of water free in 1812. Twelve years later, 115 liters of drinking water were made available per inhabitant per day, an average calculated by Jean-Jacques Brilland.
More and more companies set up in Quatre-Chemins (Pantin – Aubervilliers), some to avoid land grants and speculation, others to approach the slaughterhouses of La Villette, which opened in 1868: inns sheep, feeders, but also chemical industries recovering its waste. The fat and skins of slaughtered animals are used in tanneries, tallow foundries, oil mills and soap factories.
Barges on the Ourcq canal, in Mareuil-les-Meaux (Seine-et-Marne), around 1900. © Neurdein / Roger-Viollet
But in some places the channel is too narrow to accommodate large ships. It is first surveyed by flutes, boats that are no more than 3 m wide. It was not until the 1920s that the canal was widened, opening the way to mass traffic.
The industrial boom
Road and rail are still underdeveloped: it is on the water that goods circulate, and the canal is at the heart of river transport. Industrialists were just waiting for this: warehouses and administrative buildings are springing up like mushrooms along the canal.
On the water floats coal, coming from the mines of the North, to turn the steam engines, but also wood, cut in the forest of Morvan, being used for the carpentry of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, in particular.
Industry becomes so powerful that it redesigns the cities it occupies. In Pantin, the canal divided the city in two with the town hall of the time on the one hand, and the Quatre-Chemins on the other. Thirty big bosses sign a petition to encourage the city to secede. No doubt they hoped to be able to govern better there. It is a failure: the town hall is moved to the center of the small town, bringing about the reunification of the two parties.
The decline… then the rebirth
Faced with the boom in rail freight, commercial traffic declined at the end of the Second World War. Production methods are also changing: the raw material is no longer processed as close to the consumer as possible.
Another hard blow for the Ourcq canal, the slaughterhouses of La Villette closed their doors in 1974 and moved to Rungis. In 2001, when the Grands Moulins de Pantin stopped running, the area was already strewn with abandoned wasteland. This gloomy landscape is taken over by the crews of taggers, who make industrial wastelands their playground and bring a little life to it.
So, at the end of the 1990s, in La Villette, then for fifteen years in Pantin and Bobigny, the industrial establishments were razed, in favor of residences and tertiary companies. The channel has become trendy, bobo.
Bars, street art, strollers… the banks of the Canal de l’Ourcq have become popular with Parisians and tourists. A spectacular rebirth after years of neglect.
Today, the Ourcq canal supplies the water network, which has become undrinkable, for the city of Paris. With this water, the city cleans streets, waters green spaces and supplies the lakes of the Bois de Boulogne and Vincennes. Some boats pass through it: they load and unload construction materials, evacuate rubble. 745,000 tons are transported there per year, which is not huge.
Between heritage to keep and pollution to forget, the Canal de l’Ourcq continues its course, silent witness to the history of the districts of Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis.
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