Emma Haziza returns every Saturday to a news item around the climate, the environment, and offers solutions. Saturday, April 15, return to the ban on the consumption of tap water in four municipalities in the Pyrénées-Orientales.
Four municipalities in the Pyrénées-Orientales are still deprived of drinking water due to the drought that is already underway in the area. Faced with increasingly severe droughts since 2017, the department has not been spared. In 2021, we experienced a particularly rainy year throughout France, except in the Pyrénées-Orientales, Aude and Var.
This area is the only one which, for seven years, has hardly had a single drop of rain. The water stress is chronic, there is no more water in the aquifers, we are coming to the end of the scenario. In France, according to the latest campaign by the Bureau of Geological and Mining Research, nearly 75% of the water tables are at an extremely low level. This is still well below what we had in 2022, which had already experienced a very low winter recharge.
In these four municipalities, located near Perpignan, their water tables are dry. The water level is 30 cm above the borehole, above the bottom. It is better to avoid fetching this water, as it is muddy and undrinkable. According to Emma Haziza, “It’s really the most extreme scenario we can have” : “It reminds me a bit of what you can experience in India when you dig water today, up to 500 meters deep. There is arsenic there which is natural but which the “We find precisely at the bottom of the borehole and who is behind the first cause of mortality in the world. So we know to what extent these are elements that make the water absolutely undrinkable and we will have to find emergency solutions.”
Municipalities connected to agricultural drilling
For now, these four municipalities have been connected to an agricultural borehole. The water here too is not drinkable. It can be used to wash clothes, to take a shower, provided you do not open your mouth. And then, above all, avoid brushing your teeth with it. Avoid consuming raw foods. We can cook, but we will have to boil this water because it is not directly drinkable. So we really have a real problem.
Are there solutions? On an individual scale, thanks to flow reducers, we are able to reduce up to 80% of the flow while having the same feeling of water consumption. These solutions are to be implemented everywhere. But for the first time, swimming pools will be banned: Elne (Pyrénées-Orientales) is the first city in France which, by municipal decree, has banned the construction of boreholes or new swimming pools until the end of April 2023. But that could be prolonged given the state of the situation. We are witnessing a new swing towards this taking into account: the end of a system.
