“You have to be patient, but it swells us.” This Friday, November 26 is a day like so many others in Mare Gaillard, commune of Gosier, in Guadeloupe. A water cut, the third of the week, again dried up the taps. “Sometimes there are announcements on the radio to let us know, but not always”, explains Marie, manager of a small roadside establishment. She is busy around a grill, where she is about to prepare some meat. Better “prepare the minimum today”, she says, although she can still “make do with your stock of bottles” mineral water.
The day before, the tap gave the first signs of weakness around noon, before going silent a few hours later. Pharmacy, bakery … Everyone is in the same boat. The fault, in particular, with obsolete pipes which have not been renovated for decades. The inhabitants met by franceinfo oscillate between bitterness and resignation, because the situation has enamelled the daily life of Guadeloupe for ages. In its platform of 32 demands, and even if no one believes it any longer, the collective of Guadeloupe organizations is calling for “an emergency plan for water” and “permanent access for all to drinking water”.
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The inhabitants must keep themselves informed of the “water towers”, a calendar of scheduled cuts sector by sector, according to a rotation allowing to spare the supply of the households. But sometimes, Guadeloupe people discover the bad news at the last moment. The World Bank has also placed the Guadeloupe network in category “D”, the worst, judging “imperatives and priorities” leak reduction programs. These have reached unimaginable proportions: the loss rate was estimated at around 64% in a 2018 report, which explains the need for rotations.
Claire has to deal like everyone else with these exhausting water cuts. “This morning, to cool off, I had to go swimming at the Salines beach. You see, my jeans are still wet “, explains the 64-year-old cleaning lady. His house is located a few meters below the main street, where the remains of the barricades still litter the asphalt. “The tiles are all black, but I can’t stay in the dirt! I have to empty a mineral bottle into a bucket to mop.”
“The most complicated, during water cuts, are the toilets. And when you leave early to go to work, you have to wash yourself with a bottle of water. This is not normal!”
Claire, resident of Mare Gaillardto franceinfo
The pressure cooker simmers over low heat, and the rice is already cooked. But it was necessary to draw, once again, from reserves which seem to evaporate. “I always buy in quantity: ten packs of water about every three weeks. It is my son, who works at Le Moule, who brings them back to me”. And when the faucet is on, it’s a “white water” flowing. Claire also has a cistern, which her daughter gave her before moving. While waiting to be connected, it occupies a corner of the terrace …
Other inhabitants of Mare Gaillard, for their part, improvised their own “Reserve”. This is the case of Olivier Negrit, who scales the fish caught by a friend, a straw hat on his head. To wash himself, as with every cut, he plunged a small pink bucket into a yellow trash can full to overflow, which he had filled with water. “in anticipation”. Even if the “water towers”, a device initially planned on a temporary basis, were officially introduced in 2017, the elders of the village have always lived with this hazard. “Anyway, everything is always complicated in Guadeloupe. Absolutely everything.”
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But these techniques sometimes involve risks. One of Marie’s clients, Luigi, made a promise never to shower with water again. “cistern water”, as he says. “I once washed with stagnant water in Sainte-Anne. I had a fever for two days and the doctor had to prescribe me some medicine.” According to this inhabitant, some have therefore adopted the habit of leaving their reserves in the sun, in order to leave “ultraviolet light do the housework”.
Logically, the demonstrators met at the island’s dams cite these water cuts as one of the main causes of their discontent. In the past, moreover, residents of Le Gosier had already erected barricades to express their weariness. “We are in Guadeloupe, French Republic! All this piping that has not been renovated, it makes me go crazy every day”, storm Marie-Pierre Coper, artist known as Sista Tchad. “We have been saying for twenty years that we have difficulties in obtaining water, in quantity and quality.”
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This woman grabs a pack of small bottles of water. “Look, that’s all I managed to buy yesterday. I have a little one who drinks milk and I can’t even bottle him properly.”, she cried, exasperated by the situation. “There it’s the same, I made my fish yesterday, it brings flies, it’s yucky!”, she continues, pointing to a pot. In turn, Marie-Pierre Coper also denounces “schools that must close”, at each cut-off, the “grannies in the shit and sometimes begging for a little water”, the difficulties in cleaning …
“There is no work, no money and life is expensive in Guadeloupe”, she explains, showing a follow-up letter for an invoice of 320 euros. “I have written to the region, but have no response yet. It is not even what we consume, it takes into account all the repairs! ” The water issue is explosive today. At the foot of the wall of the house, a few stacked tear gas canisters testify to the last nights of clashes between the police and demonstrators present at the roadblocks.
“We are fed up! And when we wake up, we revolt, we are sent the Raid and the GIGN, instead of sending people to mediate.”
Marie-Pierre Coper, resident of Mare Gaillardto franceinfo
In June 2019, the Secretary of State for the Ecological Transition, Emmanuelle Wargon, visited several rehabilitation sites with the stated objective of “remove the water towers as quickly as possible”. But above all she had sent the “communities” to their responsibilities. A few months later, Emmanuel Macron assured in a statement that the State supported “the mobilization of elected officials from Guadeloupe (…), and in particular emergency work for the removal of water towers and the creation of a single union in 2020”. The latter, the SMGEAG, was set up on September 1, as a relay of the former local boards. But patience has its limits. “Guadeloupe is in turmoil, fulminates Marie-Pierre Coper, but these sanitary pass stories are just the last straw that broke the camel’s back. “