Residents of the Mérignac district, near Bordeaux, denounce a “health scandal” due to the reflux of wastewater in their homes. About 250 people are affected.
They are no longer at their first flood. Residents of the Capeyron district of Mérignac, near Bordeaux, do not live near a river or a river. The population is however subject to heavy rain, which has become constant since the beginning of the century. Witness the statements of the president of the union council of the Anabella residence, which noted each overflow episode in a notebook: 1999, 2013, 2014, 2018, 2021, 2023 and 2024.
For residents, this situation has become untenable: “Three days after the floods, my wife fell ill, with fever and vomiting and she was bed” regrets Laurent FoStner, interviewed by our colleagues from 20 minutes. Because with 30 to 45 centimeters of wastewater to evacuate, the risks of unsanitary conditions are high: “Tampax and excrement, we often find them”, deplores Frédéric enclosed at the media Rue89bordeaux. “It is a health scandal”, she is indignant at Nicole Assingue by learning the presence of the bacteria Escherichia coli in the waters.
The neighborhood association (ARPRAM) Evaluates the number of people concerned at around 250, to different degrees. “During heavy rains, the sanitation network is saturated and the land and the dwellings are flooded: but not by small puddles, really flooded, that is to say completely submerged and Filled by what comes out of the sewers, “said Frédéric to the local press. Faced with these deleterious conditions, residents denounce the obsolescence of the sanitation network as well as the inaction of the town hall of Mérignac and Bordeaux Métropole.
A “fecal danger”
And for good reason, for the city it is not a reflux of wastewater but “rainfall floods linked to the sizing of infrastructure in the residences themselves”. The urbanization work would have even contributed to the appearance of this phenomenon, according to Laurent FoSTNER: when there were still fields around houses, there were never overflows from the networks, he underlines. “For twenty-five years, more than 300 homes have been built while the sanitation networks have remained identically”, he argues 20 minuteswho devoted a report to this situation.
The association alerted the ARS to the health situation and the “fecal danger” (risk of contamination by microorganisms present in the stool) represented by these reflux of wastewater in housing. But to bring a sanitation system to standard is not free. The note of the site which would consist in changing two kilometers of network is indeed evaluated at around 10 million euros today, reports Julie Samblat, Director of Engineer and Heritage at Régie de l’Eau Bordeaux Métropole
“It is very expensive. We did not technically push the solution technically because we would impact the sector too strongly. And we cannot spend too much money on an action, if we have a cheaper solution,” said -Is it in the national newspaper. This solution is to build a retention basin. And not anywhere … at the place where Frédéric enclosed, born in the neighborhood. The engineering director ensures that her house is located in the lowest point in the whole area and that in shaving her home, we would solve the problem of reflux of wastewater.
“They try to isolate the problem on my house, instead of bringing up to standard an aging network, regrets Frédéric enclosure. I am the victim in this story, I never asked that my house be flooded with excrement, “he concludes.