When it's not raining, there's a great temptation to look at your neighbor's water.
In the Pyrénées-Orientales, where we have been waiting for the generous return of precipitation for two years - a historic and interminable situation - it is the pipe projects which are flourishing to better distribute the blue gold which is becoming too rare.
Mayor of Elne, vice-president of the departmental council, Nicolas Garcia, whose municipal decree to prohibit any new construction of swimming pools in his town last year had caused a lot of noise, battle for many years for a pipe which would connect the Vinça dam, on the Têt, largely supplied, normally, by melting snow, to that of Villeneuve-la-Raho, whose level has fallen significantly over the past two years.
Its cost, 80 million euros.
Bringing up the course of the Têt with water treated in Perpignan
President of the Perpignan Méditerranée Métropole agglomeration, Robert Vila is pushing another proposal in keeping with the times.
Collect the treated water that leaves the Perpignan wastewater treatment plant, 10 million cubic meters available, and, instead of returning it to Têt downstream from the city as is the case today, it raise the course of the Têt over 35 kilometers to release it upstream of the water intakes of the main canals which irrigate the department.
Cost, 50 million euros.
“The studies have been done, by following the route of the road and in particular that of the 116, we can be operational in 2025. But the State must be the driving force on this issue,” he argues.
Extend the aqueduct from the Rhône
Other ideas emerged: connecting the Vinça lake with that on the Agly at Cassagnes, extending the connections between irrigators' associations to allow water to circulate... But history often likes to be ironic.
To do this, it is enough to recall that the agricultural world was firmly opposed to the extension of the aqueduct from the Rhône which today stops at Narbonne.
The reason at the time was that Rhône water would allow Spanish farmers to be even more competitive than their French colleagues.
Read alsoDrought: the Pyrénées-Orientales want to avoid the water war next summer
However, it is this idea that is resurfacing in the department today.
Extend the pipe to bring it to the Pyrénées-Orientales.
“At least, we could use this resource to supply populations with drinking water, this would relieve the water tables and limit the difficulties we encounter in irrigating crops,” argues David Massot, arborist and president of an irrigators association. , in charge of the “water” file at the Departmental Federation of Agricultural Operators (FDSEA).
Studies had already been carried out at the end of the 2000s. The projects are there, now it’s time to hunt for funding.