Over the past 6 months, farmers and water stakeholders in the Vienne department have reviewed their copy to find consensus on bedpan protocol. To accompany the creation of the 30 water reservoirs, new guarantees were required, in particular to ensure the preservation of biodiversity.
Quantified objectives
Starting with water quality: farmers are committed to reducing their use of pesticides. Minus 50% within 6 years compared to the reference index. The main change in this second protocol is that the objectives have been quantified and staggered. This concerns in particular the restoration of 22 km of waterways, the protection of wetlands and the planting of 100 km of hedges. Another major commitment: securing drinking water with the abandonment of withdrawals from confined aquifers.
Tighter controls
Irrigators also agree to submit to annual and individual monitoring and controls. The protocol provides for the establishment of a water metering system to verify compliance with the withdrawal thresholds, with financial and administrative penalties as a result.
– Vienne Prefecture screenshot
A new calendar
The first phase of the project, the first 11 basins, will not be completed without validation of the HMUC study (Hydrology Environments Uses Climate) carried out by the local water commission and the public territorial establishment of the Vienne basin. In particular, this involves evaluating the thresholds for water withdrawal in winter.
In the previous version, it was envisaged to start work as soon as the protocol was signed without waiting for the results of this study. which should now be published next December, thus allowing a first pickaxe in the first half of 2023. A means of guaranteeing the consideration of scientific data, which was one of the points of tension of the opposition.
Another change in the timetable: the protocol now commits the parties concerned for a period of 20 years compared to only 6 in the previous version.
The various players in the area have until mid-October to position themselves on the project. The prefect of Vienne, Jean-Marie Girier, says he is satisfied with the compromises found: “Not everyone will agree, the main thing is to have been able to discuss, to have progressed” and warns that he will be very vigilant to the actions carried out by the opposition: “We have the right to demonstrate, we are in a democracy. On the other hand, we never have the right to threaten, intimidate or degrade.”
The irrigators, they regret that the opponents did not take part in the discussions around this new version.
Remember that the 30 basins have been authorized administratively, purged of any appeal by the courts and can now start on condition of the establishment of a protocol.