The government’s refusal to raise taxes paid by farmers on pesticides and irrigation is a “scandal”, said Thursday the Paris water distribution authority, which denounces a surge in the costs of water treatment. water for communities and therefore individuals.
At the end of a meeting with Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, the agricultural union FNSEA congratulated itself on Tuesday for having won its case on a major demand, the renunciation of the increase in two fees: that for diffuse pollution (RPD) , collected on pesticide sales, and that for levying on water resources for irrigation.
These provisions, provided for in the finance bill for 2024, were to make it possible to raise respectively 37 and 10 million additional euros to supplement the financing of water agencies, which participate in the management of the quality and quantity of water. water in a territory.
This decline has amounted to a license to pollute and waste water for the benefit of the intensive agriculture lobby, astonished Dan Lert, president of Eau de Paris.
It is once again the citizens who will pay the price of depollution and the development of irrigation in France, while we are going through a context of tension over water resources, it is scandalous, he said. he told AFP.
He recalled that Eau de Paris and the water agency were helping farmers in the Ile-de-France region, with a program of 50 million euros over ten years to help them reduce pesticides and nitrates, by switching to organic to preserve catchment areas.
Less polluted raw water means less treatment and therefore ultimately prevention at the source of pollution, which is the best system in fact, declared Mr. Lert.
Otherwise, it amounts to saying that pesticides pollute water resources and that it is public water services, through investments in ever more intensive treatment, which pay the bill, added Mr. Lert.
Since the National Health Safety Agency (ANSES) revealed the presence in drinking water of residues of a fungicide, chlorothalonil, Eau de Paris has increased treatments to eliminate pesticides in water, the cost of which tripled, from three to nine million euros.