Perspectives pour la gestion de la ressource en france

Perspectives for the management of water resources in France

Lyonnaise Des Eaux 11, Place Edouard VII, 75316 Paris Cedex 09

Auteur de correspondance : hugues.haeffner@lyonnaise-des-eaux.fr

Résumé

At the scale of France, quantitative assessments show that the available water resources can globally satisfy the current needs. The rare cases of conflicts of use result mainly from a non-optimized management of the resources. The qualitative assessment indicate that about 30 % of surface water bodies and 40 % of ground water bodies risk not reaching the good quality status by 2015 (deadline set by the WFD). Nitrates and pesticides are a major cause of the failure to reach the good status.The perspectives for active quantitative management depend on economic parameters specific to each use of the resource. An overview of various methods of active quantitative management points at the interest of developing temporary storage and reinfiltration, rather than water transport or desalinization. The promoted saving of drinking water is generally an inappropriate alternative, as it has a non-targeted impact and a collective cost.For qualitative issues, the active management must take place at catchment scale, with actions complementary to the existing legal tools. For nitrate and pesticide, a variety of preventive and curative tools has been applied with various levels of success ; the depuration capacities of wetlands should be put more into use.Be it quantitative or qualitative, the active management of water resources is still hindered by administrative (who must be the main client ?) and technical (univocal relation between actions undertaken and results observed ? delays in obtaining results ?) issues.