“Considerable” losses. UFC-Que Choisir called on the public authorities on Tuesday to “implement a real plan for the renovation of water networks”, in a France which today loses one liter out of five due to leaks, an “economic mismanagement and environmental”. This plan could be “financed through a rebalancing of the royalties paid by professional players, first and foremost intensive agriculture”, underlines the consumer defense association.
“Considerable” level of loss
The UFC, which analyzed data from the National Observatory of Public Water and Sanitation Services, “sounds the alarm about the considerable level of drinking water losses and the weakness of the measures taken to remedy them” , at a time when “water must be saved more than ever”. “Many cities show that it is possible” to control leaks, underlines the survey: Cholet (0%), Saint-Malo (0.9%), Saint-Brieuc (1.3%), Fréjus (2 .1%)…
But throughout France, one liter out of five distributed (19.9%) is lost, i.e. one billion m3 per year, equivalent to the cumulative consumption of Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nice , or 18.5 million inhabitants, underlines the UFC-Que Choisir. Twelve urban areas have leakage rates at least 10 points higher than the legal limit of 15%, set in 2012. One liter out of three even disappears in Évreux (35.5%), Aix-les-Bains (30.5 %), Cavaillon (30.3%), Amiens (30.3%) and Sens (30%), according to the association.
The association “urges” the public authorities
For rural municipalities, the authorization can rise to 35%, due to their limited budgets, branched and extended networks, etc. But in fact, it is one liter out of two lost in about a quarter of the municipalities with less than 1,000 inhabitants. The association therefore “urges” the public authorities to increase aid from the Water Agencies to priority communities, and to increase the Agency’s budget by raising the levy fees paid by professional actors.
Today the aid from the Water Agencies is “limited because of the inequity of the contributions of the various actors”: water users are supposed to contribute in proportion to their pollution and the volumes they withdraw, but the contribution of intensive agriculture is between 2% and 15%, even though it represents 48% of net consumption (and at least 80% in summer).
“If we add the amounts that agriculture should pay for the pollution for which it is responsible, this represents a considerable lack of funding for the agencies of the order of 1.6 billion euros per year”, estimates the ‘UFC-Que Choisir.
“Derisory measures” of the Water plan
“As part of the Water plan, the President of the Republic did raise the subject of leaks, but to propose derisory measures. While the experts demand 2.5 to 3 billion annually, the president announced 180 million, supplemented by an increase in fees paid largely by consumers and targeted at the smallest municipalities… in short, a drop of water! “, emphasizes the association.
Finally, technical support from departments to small municipalities should be developed. The assistance of the State services in terms of engineering (knowledge of the state of the networks, project management, etc.) was abolished in 2016, leaving the smallest municipalities destitute, deplores the survey.
According to her, the network is made up of 55% pipes made of fragile materials (grey cast iron, bonded PVC, asbestos cement), and some of them are very old. In 2019, the Assises de l’Eau set a renewal target of 1% per year, but today the real rate is 0.67%: at this rate, it would take 150 years to renew the network, when these materials last 50 to 80 years, notes the UFC.