While the dispute over the pension reform continues and the “water war” caused many victims last weekend in Sainte-Soline, Emmanuel Macron therefore resolved to dive himself in the arena. Expected on January 26 and constantly postponed, the famous “plan eau”, which he presents this Thursday, March 30 from the Hautes-Alpes (his first trip to France for two months), comes at the right time to allow the president to resume the hand. “The subject is of concern to the French, and the plan we are presenting projects us into the future”, deciphers a source in the government. The question of water resources, “vital for the country”, insists the Elysée, above all perfectly illustrates both the tensions which are tearing society apart, and the need for dialogue and consultation which will be essential to meet the challenges.
Indeed, in terms of recovery, there is urgency. Difficulties loom for the summer of 2023, after a long dry winter that left many groundwater sources dry. The restrictions, already in force in several departments, will multiply, and the arbitrations promise to rekindle the tensions between different users. In the short term, “the goal is to succeed in saving water, as we did with energy this winter”, details the Élysée.
While adapting the country, in the long term, to a water cycle that threatens to profoundly change, while forecasts announce a rise in temperature of 3.8 ° C in France by the end of the century . “This plan carries the seeds of a radical change in approach”, based on several pillars, details an adviser: “sobriety, the creation of new adapted infrastructures, and the mobilization of all the actors”. Because if water management is entirely decentralized, a framework guaranteeing the widest possible consultation must become the rule – in order to overcome tensions, the subject having become a totem for many ecologists, for whom environmental concerns must l prevail over all the others, and which refuse, sometimes violently, any modification of the course of the water.
Among the fifty measures of the plan, a part therefore relates to these (quantified) sobriety objectives, in order to achieve an overall reduction in water consumption of 10% by 2030. All sectors are targeted . Industry, individuals who will be invited, in a vast communication campaign, to restrict their uses (each French person consumes on average, today, 149 liters of water per day)… And to pay more for their “over-consumption”: a progressive water pricing, designed to encourage sobriety efforts, will be gradually generalized. Agriculture, a major consumer, will also have to accelerate a “revolution” already well underway. In addition to the rotation changes that will be encouraged (modification of certain crops, genetic improvement, multiplication of rotations, plant cover, less tillage, etc.), an envelope of 30 million euros will help farmers to modernize their equipment irrigation, by opting for drip, for example, or by equipping themselves with capacity probes or decision support software. “In times of shortage, every drop of water must count”, sums up the Élysée.
Financial support is also provided to help the communities concerned repair and maintain their pipes – today, some 20% of drinking water disappears in leaks. “The idea here is not to save money, since the water returns to the middle. But to secure access to the resource, “says the Ministry of Agriculture.
This is the second axis of another series of measures: the legislation is so restrictive, today, that 99% of wastewater, after having been treated so as not to harm the environment, goes back into the courts. water, or will be diluted in the sea. If they make it possible in the first case to maintain the flow of the rivers, this water is simply lost in the second case, when it is transformed into salt water. Very late compared to its neighbors to the south, France wants to massively develop the reuse of this wastewater (by increasing it to 10%), for the irrigation of crops in particular, in contexts that will be relevant, for example around coastal urban centers.
Legislation on wastewater will also be relaxed to allow food industries, subject to strict health regulations, to use it to clean their buildings – today, the regulations require drinking water. “In addition to using rainwater for flushing toilets, for example, this represents a potential savings of 150 million m3”, details the office of Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau.
“But you have to be lucid, savings and recycling won’t do everything,” insists an adviser. Because if agriculture will have to be deeply reformed, production will also have to be maintained – even increased, while France today imports 60% of its fruits, and 40% of its vegetables… often from countries in the South, which are even more affected. by global warming. While only 6.8% of agricultural land is irrigated in France, this share “will necessarily increase”, anticipates the government, which has made the reconquest of food sovereignty a priority. If the vine was not irrigated fifteen years ago, it threatens today, without water, to quite simply disappear… A reality that public opinion finds hard to accept.
Emmanuel Macron will therefore have to get wet, saying it clearly: substitute reservoirs, which their opponents call “megabasins”, will continue to be built, according to specific methods and method, insists the executive, citing as a model … the “basins of discord” of Sainte-Soline.
“We need consultation at the local level, like what has been done in Deux-Sèvres”, recalls the office of the Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu. “The project had been signed by all parties, and documented by scientific studies. The violent protest, organized by the Les Uprisings of the Earth collective, inflamed public opinion, but failed to put an end to it. The same method, implemented in several departments, has enabled the construction of similar works, without stirring up tensions. “It’s not a miracle solution, but it is a tool that, if well managed and well done, can in certain contexts prove to be relevant. Rejecting it out of principle is out of the question,” one adviser said.
Decided within the framework of Territorial Projects for Water Management (PTGE), which make it possible to involve all the users of a territory in a global project to facilitate the preservation and management of the resource, the construction new structures may be subject to constraints imposed on the actors – savings, changes in practices for farmers, etc. “This presupposes reaching a consensus, and avoiding blockages”, underlines the Ministry of Agriculture. Around 60 PTGEs have already been signed across the country – the goal is to reach 120 by 2027.
An investment fund of 30 million euros will be mobilized, both to restore existing installations – these 300,000 water points of more than 1,000 m2 identified in the territory, more or less forgotten and abandoned , the volume and level of siltation of which will have to be determined -, and to build new structures.
Consultation and the search for compromise permeate the philosophy that the government says it wants to promote. A spirit of dialogue which is cruelly struggling to impose itself in the current period, the question of water being at the heart of Homeric ideological quarrels. At Lake Serre-Ponçon this Thursday, a symbol of collective work directly benefiting a host of actors – electricians, farmers, leisure professionals, tourists…, Emmanuel Macron had to hammer it: violent behavior, aimed at imposing by force or by intimidation one’s own view of things, cannot be tolerated. Will it be heard? Soft version of this latent “war”, judicial and administrative harassment still makes any project development particularly long and painful.