2023-04-22 20:12:02
With the arid hills of the Aspres massif as a backdrop and the orchards of the Roussillon plain as a garden, with its ramparts and steep alleys that climb up to its imposing Romanesque church, Bouleternère is one of the emblematic villages of the Têt valley. It became even more so in mid-April, when the municipality announced that the catchment supplying the town with drinking water – as well as three neighboring villages, for some 3,000 people in total – was on the verge of drying up. All located less than thirty kilometers from Perpignan, the four towns then briefly embodied the great concern that has been going through the Pyrénées-Orientales for several months, that of the shortage of water.
The department has been hit for a year by a drought so radical that the management of the dams, and every fraction of a cubic meter of flow in the Têt and the irrigation canals, have become subjects of litigation. Associations, economic actors and authorities agree on at least two things: the current situation has no known historical analogue and no one knows how French Catalonia will spend the summer.
“Our constituents were not taken by surprisesays Pascal Trafi, the mayor of Bouleternère, a former organic farmer and commander of the gendarmerie in a previous life. As soon as we saw that we could no longer continue to take samples from the catchment, we organized a public meeting to warn them of the situation. »
The municipality wanted to avoid the total rupture – the water that stops flowing at the tap. “As soon as we noticed that the groundwater level was only a few centimeters above the water intake, we connected to an agricultural borehole, the operators of which agreed to share. Its potability is currently being evaluated. » While waiting for the results of the analyses, every week, the inhabitants come to collect, on Thursday and Friday, a pack of six bottles of spring water per person.
A new borehole is underway and should be operational in the coming months, according to the municipality. “Without the support of the sub-prefecture and the regional health agency, we would not have been able to cope”, blows the mayor. Less than a week after Bouleternère declared its catchment dry, the local daily The Independent revealed, Wednesday, April 19, that a dozen families in the town of Soler, halfway between Bouleternère and Perpignan, not connected to the network, had seen their wells dry up. Some had to leave their homes.
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