Some elected officials have managed to secure access to water in a few months. Others have the ambition, but not yet the means, and still others come up against complex situations. For territories far from cities, hunting for water is a source of existential questions.
And if the“unpublished” become the norm? In the summer of 2022, more than 1,000 municipalities took exceptional measures to ensure the continuity of drinking water service on all or part of their territory. According to a government report, 343 municipalities then resorted to cisterns (the transport of water by truck), 196 distributed bottles, 271 benefited from the help of neighbors via emergency interconnections, etc. These emergency solutions, costly and temporary, have revealed the vulnerability of rural areas, summoned to adapt at a run – and with the cost of millions of euros – to the breakaway of the climate. Both sprint and long-distance running, adaptation is already straining local elected officials.
The mayor of Berrien (Finistère) will soon be able to breathe. “There pipeline that connects us to Scrignac should be operational in the last ten days of July”, Hubert Le Lann gauge. Started in February with summer in sight, the connection between these two towns in the Monts d’Arrée, 8 km apart, should prevent the disaster scenario of 2022: some 900 inhabitants deprived of drinking water for five month. The height for this region qualified as “water tower of Brittany”.
Connected urgently in July 2022 to the reserves of a former kaolin mine, the Berry network was supplied with water unsuitable for consumption due to an excessively high level of arsenic. To allow residents to drink, cook or brush their teeth, the town hall distributed 35 pallets of bottled water, at the rate of one pack per week and per household. For the chosen one, the use of heavy work – and big money – quickly imposed itself: “In September, iIt still wasn’t raining enough to replenish our springs, he explains. All climatologists say that such summers will inevitably recur. We couldn’t stay like this.”
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In November, Berrien presented its connection project “with a shady costing, but which allowed us to apply for funding before the deadline of December 31”, continues the chosen one. In a few months, the prefect, the Water Agency and the department agreed to finance respectively 40%, 30% and 10% of all the work, costing 700,000 euros, for the connection and the construction, in a second step, a new borehole.
Time is money
But, in most villages forced to tank and deliver bottled water, it is difficult to deploy a lasting solution so quickly. In Haute-Loire, the commune of Bouchet-Saint-Nicolas, deprived of one of its two sources by an extraordinary drought, obtained an exemption in November 2022 allowing it to temporarily make the water pumped drinkable in the Bouchet lake. On this date, the then mayor estimated that the emergency solutions had already cost 60,000 euros to this village of 350 souls. In solidarity, residents have launched a kitty to lighten the burden on the small municipal treasury, but, to date, the hoped-for interconnection with the neighbor of Saint-Haon has not materialized.
In the neighboring department, in Coucouron (Ardèche), the ballet of tank trucks lasted ten months, for an amount of 200,000 euros. It took until May for a lasting solution to emerge, with the capture of a new source, located 6 km from the town centre. For 600,000 euros of work, its water will be stored in a reservoir and transported via a pump to the hamlets.
Mutualize to remain autonomous?
In Creuse, the northeast of the department is now regularly affected by drought. “The construction site is nearing completion. At the end of the year, we will be connected. Drinking water supply will be secured., welcomes Vincent Turpinat, president of the Intercommunal Drinking Water Supply Syndicate (Siaep) Boussac-Gouzon and Mayor (Renaissance) of Jarnages. The chosen one remembers last summer, “catastrophic”, and is delighted to see the completion of a project that he saw stagnate for fifteen years: the construction of a 39 km pipeline between the Creuse and the neighboring department of Allier.
Episodes of tension on water resources have played “a catalytic role” and put an end to the last local reluctance, explains the chosen one. At the heart of the crisis, in July 2022, three new municipalities joined the Siaep. On May 31, the Secretary of State for Ecology, Bérangère Couillard, launched this “pharaonic shipyard” to 13 million euros.
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Since the drought exposed the vulnerability of rural, isolated communes, victims of decades of underinvestment in their networks, the government has never ceased to praise the merits of intercommunal groupings. The meaning of history, or at least that of the law: the municipalities will have to have transferred their competences in terms of water and sanitation by 2026 at the latest, to the chagrin of many rural and mountain mayors. They fear a loss of autonomy and point out the specificity of their territories. “When there is no more water, it is by pooling that we remain autonomous”, assures them Vincent Turpinat.
In Puy-de-Dôme, the president of the joint union in charge of water Beurières-Chaumont-Saint-Just, in the medium mountains of Livradois, thinks precisely the opposite. “Here, it’s not really the flat country”, launches Gilbert Portail. In these isolated areas, “ohthere are 3 km of pipelines just to supply a house”, he says. “It costs 300,000 euros to resupply 15 homes and they want us to believe that the solution would be to join a network of 12,000 subscribers? You have to be serious”, he sighs.
For him, integrating such a structure would mean abandoning his territory, where, at present, “Three agents monitor the level of the reservoirs full-time and prevent leaks for two unions and the municipality of Arlanc”. An interconnection, yes, but not just any. In anticipation, he castigates “calls for tenders at 4 million euros, for 50 municipalities”, and water giants unaware of local constraints. “I have nothing against Veolia and Suez, but there is no point in having delusions of grandeur. When the resource dried up, we went up with trucks to the meadows, where the springs are. We know them,” continues the councilman.
“Our pipes are in good condition, but it’s not raining. Do you think they’re going to dig 50 km of big pipes in the mountains to pump water from Clermont to us?”
Gilbert Portail, President of the Siaep of Beurières, Chaumont-le-Bourg and Saint-Just-de-Baffieat franceinfo
On these steep terrains, the D system is assumed. As in Mirabeau, near Digne (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), where the mayor and a deputy identified a source and drilled a 30-meter hole, in March, in the hope of finding a “resource in case of shortage”. But the connection, hampered by administrative imperatives, frustrates the elected official: “If it were up to me, it would have been done already since October”, he launched at the beginning of the summer.
“Act quickly” in the face of accelerating global warming
Joël Beynel, the mayor of Darazac (Corrèze), has just left a meeting. President of the Syndicat des eaux de Puy du Bassin, which brings together a handful of rural municipalities in Xaintrie, he is pleased to see “to advance” the file of an interconnection between Saint-Privat and Argentat, the ultimate hope according to him of ending several years of summer water shortages in his valley. At this stage, the elected officials discuss “the purchase of land, the circuits that the pipelines will take, the cost of the works, of course, and their impact on the price of a cubic meter of water”, he lists.
Because in these agricultural areas, farmers fear that this development will drive up the cost of the precious resource. This “water battle” which drags on maintains Saint-Privat and its surroundings in precariousness. “We are at the mercy of the weather,” deplores Joel Beynel. “We live from day to day. We are in contact with carriers ready to intervene in case. It’s the rain that decides”, continues the chosen one, anxious to take back this part of competence transmitted in fact to the elements.
“It is certain that the question of water will be central for the following mandates. All eyes are on us because we have resorted to cisternage, but those who believe they are safe must be ready.”
Joël Beynel, President of the Water Union of Puy du Bassin (Corrèze)at franceinfo
“It is today that the financiers are present. The more time passes, the more complicated it will be”, he predicted.
In Seillans (Var), where a district was supplied by tank trucks last summer, the mayor, René Ugo (LR), sees adaptation as “a rise in power”. In the short term: smart meters to control water consumption in real time and intervene at the slightest leak, but also “the rreduction of building permit authorizations, the time to take stock with those whose work has not started. That’s 1,000 homes on hold.”
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In the medium term: heavier works to guarantee drinking water to the 350 inhabitants in difficulty in the town, whatever the conditions. Because this year “heaven is with us, if I may say so”, blows the city councilor, president of the Community of communes of the Pays de Fayence. “The groundwater reacted well to the spring rains. But this was not the case with our neighbours”, he notes, also convinced that he will never again be able to count on the clouds.
“There was a first warning in 2017, but in 2022 we really saw the effects of accelerating climate change, notes the chosen one. My feeling is that we have to act quickly. This problem will remain a problem, but at least let it be a manageable problem.”