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Regarding the efforts requested, the Minister for Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, assured that they would not relate “to individuals alone”.
The government’s plan to improve water managementis closed» and will be presented «next week“, promised Saturday the Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu, while France is experiencing a record rain deficit. “The plan is complete” And “I will have the opportunity to present it on Thursday“, declared the minister, guest of France Inter and questioned on this Water plan, initially planned for January 26 then postponed and several times announced as imminent.
“The bottom line is the fact of ending up with global warming which forces us to think about sobriety in the water“, recalled Christophe Béchu, quoting climate experts who believe “between minus 10 and minus 40%» of water availability in France in the coming decades.
“This plan will take care of quantity – how do we do with less” And “quality – only 44% of water bodies in France are in good ecological condition“. Also, “we are going to talk about governance because today we have a rather Kafkaesque system on management, and then we are obviously going to talk about means because there is no plan if there is no financesummed up the minister. Christophe Béchu alluded to a modification of the drilling regulations, because “today you can drill and take thousands of cubic meters with sometimes very few permits“.
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Fight against waste and an agricultural component on the program
Another announced aspect of the plan: the fightagainst waste“. Currently, approximately1 liter of drinking water on 5 parts in leaks“, and even one liter out of two in certain territories, “it’s just not possibleadded the minister. The plan also provides for measures to increase the rate of reuse of wastewater, less than 1% in France against 8% in Italy, 14% in Spain and even 85% in Israel.
Saturday, on France Info, Christophe Béchu had also underlined that this Water plan would include “an agricultural component“, at the very moment when thousands of people gathered in the department of Deux-Sèvres, to demonstrate against the “basins“, vast reservoirs dedicated to the irrigation of crops, contested by ecologists and part of the agricultural world. The demonstration turned into a confrontation which left dozens of injured on the side of the police and demonstrators, with a member of the procession between life and death on Sunday.
After a scorching summer of 2022 and a sparsely rained winter, some 80% of underground water tables in mainland France were at levels below normal in February, according to data from the Bureau of Geological and Mining Research, compared to less than 50% in February 2022.