The mega-basins are spreading in the former Poitou-Charentes region. The prefect of Vienne, Jean-Marie Girier, has discreetly launched a program of thirty substitution reserves with a capacity of 8.9 million cubic meters of water in total in the basin of the Clain river, for 60 million euros subsidized at nearly 70%. Eventually 120 farms will be connected to it, out of the 153 involved in the memorandum of understanding signed on the evening of November 3, just a few days after the highly publicized protest weekend in Sainte-Soline, in Deux-Sèvres. Caught off guard, a few hundred opponents gathered in extremis in the streets of Poitiers. Here too, public support for the irrigation of agriculture confronted with climate change is far from reaching a consensus.

The prefecture implicitly recognizes that the debate on the sharing of water resources remains to be conducted, since it announces a possible territorial project including all water stakeholders… but for later, after the launch of the basin construction site. Because the protocol, object of consultation since 2019, did not convince. It ended, apart from a few local elected officials and deputies, in a tete-a-tete between the State and the agricultural sector, represented by five groups of irrigators, the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA ), Crédit Agricole, Groupama… The Vienne Chamber of Agriculture, run by the Rural Coordination, refused to sign. Neither did the Confédération paysanne.

Other notable players did not want to join: environmental associations, the fishing federation, river unions, the public establishment responsible for managing the Clain basin and especially the urban community of Greater Poitiers, strong of forty municipalities. With its public management, it produces drinking water and manages sanitation for the inhabitants of the agglomeration.

“Project carried out backwards”

“Vienne is experiencing an unprecedented drought, because the water does not flow from a source, because it is precious, essential and rare, let’s save it”, repeats tirelessly the answering machine of Greater Poitiers. The community did not want to join the protocol, not in principle against taking water from November to March for use the rest of the year, but “because this project is being carried out backwards with a form of governance that we discovered at the last minute and which we don’t like”says Laurent Lucaud (PCF), vice-president of the urban community.

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