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What would happen if tomorrow the city of Nantes no longer had access to drinking water? For Brut, journalist Florian Thomas went to observe the drought affecting certain areas of the Loire, which have been dry since August.
For nearly a month, the entire Loire-Atlantique department has been in a state of crisis regarding drinking water. A few tens of kilometers downstream of the Loire, is the water catchment of the city of Nantes, which could also be impacted by the effect of global warming and this unprecedented drought.
“There, we really see an arm of the Loire which is completely dry. These images are quite maddening, but in reality, it’s not the Loire directly. In the Loire, there is still water. The problem comes rather from another phenomenon, it is the fact that we have a muddy plug. In a drought phase, this muddy plug can rise and at that time it will reach an area that will be sensitive. Why ? Because it is an area from which water is taken”, explains Emma Haziza, hydrologist and founder of “Mayane Labs”. The Nantes water plant produces 43 million cubic meters of water each year and supplies 85% of the population of Nantes Métropole.
Due to the sludge observed in the Loire, purifying and making the water drinkable can be more difficult. “When there is going to be the presence of the sludge, the difficulty is that our raw material, which is Loire water, will be water that is very loaded with suspended solids, a bit like mud very liquid”, explains Pascal Roussies, technical manager of drinking water production in Nantes. “We push the installation a little bit to its limits, to its technical limits, because there is a lot more material to remove. The difficulty for the next few days will be to produce enough water”, he continues.