The summer rains were not enough to fill our water tables. France had “72% of groundwater below normal for the season” on August 1, against 68% a month earlier, the Minister for Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, announced on Thursday. “We are on data that is comparable to last year at the same time” but the situation is “very contrasting” depending on the region, he explained to a few journalists.
“We have both a situation which is better in the Great West in general, in particular in Brittany, a part of Aquitaine, but on the contrary we have a situation which is more worrying with historically low levels on the side for example from the Rhône and Saône valleys,” explained the minister. The summer rains will therefore not have made it possible to correct a difficult situation because they do not penetrate deeply and do not make it possible to recharge the water tables.
32 departments in “crisis”
These rains “water the vegetation” but “we especially need rain during autumn and winter to properly recharge the groundwater”, recalled Christophe Béchu. In addition, 85 municipalities are currently experiencing water shortages, (67 supplied by tanker trucks and 18 by bottled water), ie around ten more than a week ago, specified Christophe Béchu. At the end of last summer, a thousand municipalities had found themselves in difficulty, including nearly 750 supplied by cistern or bottled water.
Current tensions concern the departments of Alpes-Maritimes, Dordogne, Doubs, Hérault, Pyrénées-Orientales, Var and Vosges. The drought affects a large part of the country since 32 departments are in “crisis” on all or part of their territory and 20 on “enhanced alert”, which results in more or less significant restrictions on uses such as watering lawns or car washing.