Due to the “silt plug” phenomenon in the Loire, the withdrawal of drinking water could therefore be limited in the agglomeration of Nantes in the coming years.
Will we run out of water soon in Nantes? The low flow of the Loire threatens to interrupt the supply of the city and its surroundings with blue gold. The fault is the phenomenon of “silt plug” caused by the drought of recent weeks: the lower the flow of the river, the more impurities accumulate in the water, compromising its good quality for consumption.
And these days the measurements carried out by the Nantes Métropole purification plant are of concern.
“We risk having quite transparent periods for us, in which the water will be of normal quality”, reassured Pascal Roussies, engineer and head of the production of drinking water in the Nantes conurbation, at the microphone of BFMTV.
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But there will be “other times with water that will be difficult to treat, that we can still treat but produce less drinking water, and other times of the day when we will be forced to stop production.”
Thanks to the plant’s reserves, the risk of a cut in drinking water has been ruled out for the time being. But the authorities are trying to anticipate future difficulties. Because with global warming, mud accumulation phenomena are likely to be more frequent and last longer.
“These are very concrete things, with the diversification of the pumping points on our various resources”, suggests Robin Salecroix, vice president of Nantes Métropole, who does not forget to mention the question of water saving. .
