It’s a gesture that has become so commonplace: You turn on the tap, drinking water flows. This is no longer the case in Marnac and Berbiguières since Tuesday July 26. The water from the spring that supplies the two villages is cloudy. Way too much to drink. In the meantime, the operator has connected to a smaller source. So measures were taken and on the whole, the inhabitants are paying attention.
According to the mayor of Marnac, there are at least 60 swimming pools in the two municipalities, plus the gardens to be watered, especially in this heat. The emergency source cannot fill everything, explains Bernard Faget. “Today we pump 8m3 per hour in this source and we are really at the maximum of what we can pump. In summer, we use between 250m3 and 300m3 per day.” This represents more than 10.5m3 per hour on average.
So on the whole, the inhabitants understood the essential, this is the case of Karim: “Someone from the town hall came to bring us three bottles of water. We were just told not to drink tap water for the moment. Afterwards we are careful because we know that there is not much water at the moment and that this is not the time to abuse all that.
There are, however, a few holdouts: “Again this morning I forbade a person to put drinking water in a swimming pool, it’s not possible. We can’t afford to do that when there are others who don’t have not even enough to wash, laments the mayor, Bernard Faget.
That’s an alert. In the future, we will have to reduce our consumption anyway. You have to expect to have restrictions, so get to work right away – Bernard Faget
Where does the problem come from, exactly?
It happened in the middle of the night, 35 meters underground: the pump that brings drinking water from the source to the 400 inhabitants of the two towns stopped. The water was cloudy, it was a detector that stopped the pump. It was only in the afternoon that the first houses, those in height, saw their tap dry up. The municipality has found a solution: another source, 200m away. We’ve used it before, but we don’t know if the water is still drinkable. The operator is connected to it, but it does not cover all the needs. So before connecting to a bigger source, you have to save. It is therefore forbidden to fill your swimming pool, wash your car, or water your garden until October 31, according to a prefectural decree. The municipality distributed bottles of water to the inhabitants. She hopes to have the results of the analyzes this Monday, August 1st.