Successive waves of heat waves this summer never stop lowering the level of the Loire. And it’s not over. The rainy episode of the weekend of August 15 has certainly led to an improvement but it is only a respite. Faced with the lack of precipitation, an even more severe low water level should be put in place to bring the flow of the river below the crisis threshold.
A flow below the crisis threshold
Rains, heavier than expected, fell last weekend especially in the Allier and upstream of the dams of Villerest (Loire) and Naussac (Lozère) which regulate a large part of the Loire basin. They allowed an improvement of the situation of the royal river but “It’s just a lull” valued Emmanuel Lehmann, Head of the Dams Department at the Loire Public Establishment in Orleans. For the technician “the background noise remains the same with very low stream flows”. As the weather forecasts are hardly optimistic in terms of future precipitation, an even more severe low water level will have to be put in place. Consequence, heightened alert, the situation of the royal river should pass in the next days in a state of crisis.
Drastic restrictions ahead
“It’s only a matter of days” says Emmanuel Lehmann. The authorities were preparing to trigger this state of crisis before the rains fell last weekend. A brief respite, as we said. In order to preserve remaining volumes in the reservoirs of the two works, 46% in Villerest and a little less than 50% in Naussac and to hold until the end of autumn, the flow of the Loire will therefore increase to 38m3/s. This is well below the crisis threshold which is set at 43m3/s. Even in 2003 and 2019, years marked by low river levels, such a threshold had never been reached.
Next weekend or early next week, Régine Engström, prefect of the Centre-Val de Loire Region and coordinator of the Loire Bretagne basin could, by decree, bring the Loire from a state of heightened alert to a state of crisis alert resulting in even more drastic bans on the use of water. The use of water then being limited to the highest priority issues (drinking water supply, public security, animal watering, etc.).