On the one hand, there is the official speech, necessarily reassuring: since the launch with great fanfare of the Water plan by Emmanuel Macron in March 2023, “100% of the commitments have been launched”, the Ministry of Transition is satisfied. ecological. And then there is the feeling on the ground, which is less optimistic. Particularly on the reuse of wastewater (REUT), one of the key elements of the country’s new strategy.
A quick look back: France has fallen seriously behind in this area, since it recycles barely 1% of its wastewater. A much lower proportion than that reached in Israel (more than 85%), Singapore (40%) or even Spain (15%). To get back up to speed, the executive has set a target of 1,000 projects to develop by 2027, in order to achieve a rate of 10% recycled water at the end of the decade.
The targeted threshold, however, seems out of reach given the current dynamic. Less than fifteen projects have seen the light of day over the last five years, underlined the working group on the evaluation of new sanitation processes for small and medium-sized communities (Epnac), in a panorama published last summer.
“Release a certain number of projects”
The “pile” of projects is substantial, and the matter is moving forward, the ministry is reassured. Of the 419 ideas listed, 136 would already be put into service, 88 under review and 200 under study. Data also reused, since it dates from a previous progress report carried out in October. However, players in the sector display more moderate enthusiasm. The Suez group, which distributes water to more than 4 million customers, has around fifty projects. Veolia, another French water technology giant, indicates that it has gone from 3 to 50 operations in one year. “We aim to reach 200 operations by 2025, in line with the various administrative authorizations,” specifies the company.
A way of reminding us that beyond the impression of infinite water resources, which has long put people to sleep before the harsh return to reality of the 2022 drought, the regulatory context also acts as a brake on the REUT. The executive has set out, in this first year of the Water plan, to correct the situation: a decree signed in the summer simplifies procedures and eliminates the five-year experimentation period; decrees published at the end of the year specify the thresholds and conditions of use, governing for example the watering of green spaces, cleaning of roads, agricultural irrigation or more specifically the uses of wastewater by the agri-food industry . Another decree concerning the domestic use of unconventional water should soon follow.
“These packages of texts should allow us to release a certain number of projects,” specifies the ministry. A step in the right direction, which unfortunately does not resolve another fundamental problem highlighted by Epnac: that of the economic model “still to be built and which deserves to be seriously studied”.