Orange armbands and bursting laughter, Basile, 3, spins above the water in his father's arms.

"This swimming pool gives another dynamic to family life", says Clotilde Sanz.

For her, her sisters, their children, the parental home has been for a few months "even more a place of life, of reunion".

Born from confinement, “this project changes our lives. As soon as we wake up, we are on vacation!” Enthuses his father, Frédéric Sanz, who will now hesitate “much more” to travel in the summer.

“Since the Covid-19 crisis, we have multiplied our sales by seven”, confirms Vincent Brisse, commercial director of “Sensassion Piscine”, their installer.

"When I started in 2003, we sold about twenty a year. Today, it's more than a hundred".

According to the Federation of Swimming Pool Professionals (FPP), of the 3.2 million private swimming pools existing in France at the end of 2021, 135,000 were in Hauts-de-France, compared to less than 30,000 in 2005.

"Nonsense"

Only 7% of individual houses are now equipped in the region, but the rise in temperatures is helping "the market to develop", observes the general delegate of the FPP Joëlle Pulinx-Challett.

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"Swimming pools have also become smaller, cheaper", offering "the possibility for less well-off customers to access them", notes Laurent Piette, seller of "kit" swimming pools.

In a garden with burnt lawn in Leforest (Pas-de-Calais), he helps a customer to finalize his pond.

This part of the department is not yet placed on "drought alert", leaving the possibility of filling it.

"We always act up against the wall. Restrictive measures should be taken well in advance", laments Arnaud Gauthier, teacher-researcher in the field of water at the University of Lille.

At a time when France is experiencing its worst drought since 1959, "building swimming pools is nonsense", he slices.

Some French municipalities "are even actively considering modifying local urban plans to limit their construction", he notes.

In 2020, each French person consumed 148 liters of drinking water per day on average (54 m3/year), according to the National Observatory of Water and Sanitation Services (Sispea).

With significant geographical disparities: 232 liters in the Alpes-Maritimes, against 116.6 in the North.

"The climate, the potential impact of swimming pools", explain it in part, according to Sispea.

"Scapegoat"

"Private swimming pools represent 0.1% of total water consumption in France", replies Joëlle Pulinx-Challett.

If the first filling is consumer (about 45 m3), the water is only renewed by a third each year.

"This can represent 15% of a family's consumption", analyzes Nicolas Roche, researcher at the European Center for Research and Education in Environmental Geosciences (CEREGE).

But "watering your 100 m2 lawn for a month will consume ten times more", he adds, calling for "avoiding the scapegoat policy".

Water, essential for all activities, will be scarcer in the future and “priority uses must be designated” locally, he underlines.

He calls for "giving an environmental value to water", with a fluctuating price in the summer, "when it is less available", and according to the uses, "essential" or "recreational".

In the Artois-Picardie basin, "the volume available annually is now fully used, we no longer have any margin", warns the director of the Regional Water Agency, Thierry Vatin.

A third is consumed during the summer, mainly for agriculture, whose needs are growing.

"With excess recreational uses on top of that, we're overexploiting."

“We have the objective of reducing consumption by 10% within six years”, he indicates.

The division between types of users must soon be decided within "local commissions" including all the parties.

"All will have to save money."

Some elected officials plead for progressive pricing: a free volume of water for essential needs, then a high price above a certain threshold.

© 2022 AFP