Water management: the government's plan "is complete" and will be presented next week

Europe 1 with AFP 12:14 p.m., March 25, 2023

"It is completed and I can tell you at this stage that it will be presented next week," said the Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu, guest of France Info and questioned about a water plan already announced as imminent and whose presentation is awaited, without however giving a precise date. Regarding the efforts required, he assured that they would not focus "on individuals alone".

149 litres of drinking water consumed per day per person

"We have a global subject, yes, we consume 149 liters of drinking water per day and per person. In all this, there is water that we could not use and there is water that could no longer be drinkable, because it would be rainwater, because it would be gray water," he said.

"We will obviously move on the authorization for example to use the water of his washing machine to go to the bottom of his toilet and avoid that it is drinking water everywhere, which is prohibited at the minute we speak," said Christophe Béchu, who said he wanted to "move on the reuse of wastewater".

An agricultural component provided for in the Water Plan

The minister also stressed that this water plan would include "an agricultural component", at the very time when thousands of people are gathered in the department of Deux-Sèvres, to demonstrate against the "basins", vast reservoirs dedicated to the irrigation of crops, contested in particular by part of the agricultural world. "We know that in terms of withdrawals, we need sobriety trajectories, there are quality issues," continued Mr. Béchu, indicating that "56% of our water bodies in France (...) are not in good ecological condition".

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"The reality is that of a warming that makes you not only have less water, but you also have soils that are no longer the same, you have temperatures that are no longer the same, it will necessarily push to move part of our production and our agricultural model," said the minister.