The government unveiled on Monday a list of 12 of the 50 industrial sites that will be supported by the State to significantly reduce the amount of water withdrawn for their operation, as part of the water plan unveiled in March, we learned from of the government. While France is in the middle of an episode of summer heat, three ministers, that of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu, and his colleagues from Industry and Biodiversity, Roland Lescure and Sarah El Haïry, go to Monday visit to Balan in the Ain on the site of the PVC plastic manufacturer Kem One. This industrialist is one of the 50 who undertakes to do his bit to achieve a 10% reduction in the country’s water withdrawals by 2030, a target set by Emmanuel Macron on March 30 at Lake Serre-Ponçon (Hautes -Alps).
Several chemical players are involved, such as the TotalEnergies refining site in Donges (Loire-Atlantique), but also in the steel industry, with ArcelorMittal in Dunkirk (North) and Florange (Moselle) or even in the food industry, with the Isigny-Sainte-Mère dairy cooperative (Calvados). If the industry represents “only” 8% of the withdrawals and 4% of the water consumption of the country, “there are territories where an industrialist can represent volumes much larger than the national average”, underlines a government source . To draw up the list of the 50 committed factories which must be shut down by the end of the year, “we looked at which sites were large consumers of water, in territories under pressure on the resource and where, in a preliminary dialogue with the industrialist, we had a presentiment of the potential for water savings”, specified this source.
Above all, the State intends to “support” manufacturers, in particular through water agencies, to “facilitate the co-financing of studies, facilitate the co-financing of the implementation of the solutions found, and facilitate the administrative implementation of these solutions”. On the financial level, “we are not creating an ad hoc system”, but the upward revision of 475 million euros in the annual budget of the water agencies, announced on March 30, “participates in this rise in power “of the support of industrialists, said the source.