The Pyrénées-Orientales are preparing to experience a tourist season complicated by the lack of water, while part of the department will go into a drought crisis situation.
This year’s drought is extraordinary and part of the Pyrénées-Orientales department will go into a crisis situation on Wednesday May 11. However, the population of the Pyrénées-Orientales is preparing to quadruple this summer to run one of the lungs of the economy: tourism. In this case, how can the fight against extreme drought and mass tourism be reconciled?
To find an answer, you must first go to Port Vendres in the south of the department. Facing the sea, there is a blue container: it is a small desalination unit that was installed three weeks ago. It is not yet operational, but it symbolizes the state of emergency of the municipalities for which all solutions are good to take in the face of the lack of water, including the smallest. “It will be symbolic, explains Mayor Grégory Marty. This will provide an additional solution for our farmers, especially our winegrowers who are in the midst of treating their vines and need water to dilute their treatments. But the quantities of water generated are still quite small.”
The ant’s strategy
We find this strategy of the ant, where we realize small savings almost everywhere, in the campsites of the department which will inflate the population of the department this summer. The Dunes campsite, for example, which accommodates 3,000 people in summer, has a 500 cubic meter swimming pool. He will therefore have to tighten his belt, and he has even already started. “We have not watered our green spaces since December 2023, details director Philippe Palau. And since the opening of the water park, the pools have been working, but the slides have stopped, as have the ‘aquatoons’ for children. This saves us a fairly significant loss of water.”
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In an attempt to avoid conflicts of use and build a culture of sobriety, the prefect has set up charters in which town halls, campsites and farmers undertake to preserve water. Campsites must therefore reduce their consumption by 35%. It is a give and take since the town halls hope for example to obtain certain exemptions for the family vegetable gardens or the most fragile plantations. This summer, Torreilles, by the sea, will see its population quadruple. Marc Medina, the mayor of the town, therefore provides reserves to store the waste water of his water park in particular: “The municipality has decided to buy large tarpaulins that we will fill with water recovered from the swimming pools of the campsites that are accompanying us in this experiment. The water from these tarpaulins will be used both for municipal services, but also in the event of an emergency. fire, to fill the cisterns of the firefighters.”
“We are up against the wall, as often in these environmental policies. We are always waiting for the last moment to implement actions.”
Marc Medina, Mayor of Toreilleat franceinfo
This summer, departmental officials believe that there will be enough drinking water for everyone, at least on the coast. But in the most touristic sector, drinking water comes from the deepest aquifers which have been overexploited in recent decades for all types of use. In addition, they have a weakness: they risk being contaminated by seawater. This phenomenon is already underway in some catchments. “When you take a sample from an aquifer, what is called a cone of depression is created.warns Henri Got, former academic and hydrogeologist. So the water comes from everywhere, including downstream, that is to say from the sea. If we take too much, the cone widens and the sea water enters… It is irreversible: once the tablecloth is salty, it’s forever.” There is therefore an issue of preserving these deep aquifers which concerns future generations since these aquifers take hundreds of years to be reconstituted when it rains.
The department wishes to create and disseminate a culture of water sobriety. The summer of 2023 will be a test, to see if tourism can rhyme with good citizenship. “Today, the situation is complicated, worries the mayor of Port-Vendres Grégory Marty. If we stayed between us, it would be fine, but with this tourist contribution, which is necessary for our economy, we risk going through difficult months…” Lhe department’s problem is that tourism is not the only constraint on water. Agriculture and firefighting are also taking over reserves, as well as hard-to-control illegal drilling. There would be 2,000 throughout the department.