« I haven’t had water from the tap for nine days. » Agnès is a resident of the Dampierre district on the heights of Gosier, on the south coast of Grande-Terre, in Guadeloupe. From September 3 to 13, she suffered a water cut before returning to “ normal “, that is to say every other day without “ or bleu “. The single water and sanitation union of Guadeloupe (Joint Union of Water and Sanitation Management of Guadeloupe, SMGEAG) was forced to implement these rotating outages because of the disastrous state of its networks: the leak rate estimated between 60 and 70 %.
As the apartment that Agnès rents is not equipped with a tank, this single medical representative bought a device that can produce water from humidity in the air. « It cost me 2300 euros, which is a lot of money, but it allows me to recover 13 liters per day »she says by telephone to Reporterre. She uses them sparingly for washing, washing dishes or for the toilet. « My neighbor, who has two young children, goes to the laundromat to do laundry every other day. And she keeps buying big containers of water. It all cost him a fortune. She is very thin and tired, because she gets up every night to check if the water has returned. »
« We feel like we smell bad and we feel dirty »
Agnès was also one of the tens of thousands of victims of the sabotage of the drinking water transport network (the Belle-Eau-Cadeau feeder), which serves both parts of the island, last March. Result: she was deprived of water for eighteen days.
During these periods of shortage, daily life becomes hell for residents. « We feel bad and we feel dirty. At the doctors I go to, the toilets are locked. I had to equip myself with a potty to be able to relieve myself on the road. I’m ashamed, it’s humiliating »confides Agnès. Eventually, morale weakens. « Doctors tell me that they have patients who are depressed because of the water crisis. »
Amélie, another resident of Gosier who lives with her family in a house by the sea, spends crazy amounts of money buying bottles. « We buy between ten and fifteen packs of local water every two weeks for drinking and cooking, because, even when we have water, it is not recommended to drink it or brush our teeth with it. » The pack of local water costs a little more than 2 euros, while Volvic or Evian are sold in supermarkets for between 6 and 7 euros. Added to this are the invoices paid SMGEAGor between 2000 and 3000 euros per year for this family of four.
In Guadeloupe, residents pay 6.74 euros (excluding taxes) per m3. Or 55 % more expensive than in mainland France according to the database of public water and sanitation services (SISPEA). This exorbitant cost for a failing service fuels the anger of the population against the SMGEAG. More and more subscribers are refusing to pay their bills, which are often riddled with errors or even non-existent. « I never receive a bill, the water union just sends me a simple SMS to tell me how much I have to pay »says Agnès.
43 % of unpaid water bills
This invoice strike, which began at the end of the 2000s, would have been encouraged by many local elected officials. It has taken on worrying proportions. When the SMGEAG was created in September 2021 to succeed all the water and sanitation unions, the rate of unpaid bills was already very high: 23 %, while the national average is less than 2 %. Since then, it has continued to increase to reach 43 % at the end of 2023, according to a document submitted by the union to its supervisory authorities (the departmental and regional councils and the State) in June 2024 and that Reporterre obtained (page 30 of the document).
« When Paris learned of this rate, no one wanted to believe it, says an internal source at the union. This is the opposite of what the prefect and the union leaders said. Paris even requested a quick audit to check if there was no embezzlement ! » The government (then resigned) also decided to freeze twelve million euros out of the twenty million euros of the annual subsidy paid to finance operations. Asked by Reporterreneither of the two supervisory ministries (that of Ecological Transition and that of Overseas Territories) answered our questions. No more than the prefecture of Guadeloupe.
The Belle-Eau-Cadeau drinking water production plant, from which the feeder leaves.
© Thierry Gadault / Reporterre
This exchange of arms between Paris and Basse-Terre (see box) also questions the union’s ability to keep the promises of the new version of its multi-year investment plan, presented at the beginning of August. It plans an investment of 247 million between 2023 and 2027. That is a drop of 73 million euros compared to the initial plan unveiled in October 2023. Above all, this new plan sacrifices the credits allocated to sanitation: they fall to 46 million euros, compared to the original 150 million (page 4 of this document).
Threat of closure of bathing waters
An incomprehensible decision, while the Regional Health Authority (ARS) continues to warn of the disastrous consequences of sanitation failures, dirty water flowing into nature and by the sea. Last July, in its annual study on the quality of bathing water, the agency inventoried that « 63 % of swimming is classified as excellent quality, i.e. 4 % less than in 2021 ; 16 % are of good quality, 4 % of sufficient quality, 13 % of insufficient quality (including 7 % prohibited), i.e. 5 % more than in 2021 ». The threat of a closure by the end of the decade of all bathing places, in rivers or on the beach, is increasing month by month.
As for investments in infrastructure, if the envelope has been increased, the planned work, which consists of changing kilometers of large pipes, will be insufficient to put water back into the tap. « The main problem is leaks, 90 of which % concern the distribution network, and not the large pipes »explains a technician to Reporterre. If the union claims to repair between 6,000 and 7,000 per year, they would in fact be more numerous, between 9,000 and 10,000. « This is only visible leaks, we cannot detect underground leaks, specifies this technician. For example, in Capesterre-Belle-Eau, where the feeder leaves (the main drinking water transport network), the leak level reaches 400 m3 per hour ! This is the reason why there is not enough pressure in the feeder to serve the entire south coast of Grande-Terre. »
According to our information, the pressure had fallen below 5 bars at the beginning of September, while it takes 7 to go as far as Le Gosier and serve subscribers living in the heights. And 11 to supply Saint-François (the southeastern tip of Grande-Terre). Under these conditions, Agnès, Amélie and all the subscribers in southern Grande-Terre are not about to find water at the tap every day.
WHEN PARIS DO SIMILAR OF GODCOVER THE EDALITAND
The anger of the Parisian supervisory authorities against the leaders of SMGEAG caused a victim: the head of the accounting agency (responsible for paying invoices and salaries), an official from the regional public finance department, did not obtain the renewal of her secondment, according to a prefectural source. According to an internal source at the union, the financial director of SMGEAG would also be threatened, as well as the deputy general manager, Marcus Agbekodo.
« The elected officials led by Jean-Louis Francisque, the mayor of Trois-Rivières and president of the SMGEAGwant to fire him and the prefect Xavier Lefort told them that he would not oppose it »says a union official. Contacted via his chief of staff, the mayor of Trois-Rivières did not respond to us.
Warning letter from the president of SMGEAG to the deputy general director.
But this sudden outbreak of fever which seized Paris and the Guadeloupean leaders is largely overplayed, even artificial. Since the start of the year, both the Parisian supervisory authority and the local elected officials who sit on the union committee of SMGEAG know all about the problems within the accounting agency and the financial department. An audit carried out by the regional public finance department, which Reporterre obtained, alerted from January 2024 on « the situation of the accounting agency of SMGEAG […] weakened since creation in September 2021 »due in particular to an overload of work linked to the liquidation of the previous water and sanitation unions which she also had to take care of (page 4 of this document).
But the accounting and financial situation of SMGEAG has become so tense that a scapegoat must now be designated. A temporary solution which does not make it possible to resolve all the problems which penalize the structure and which prevent it from restoring normal water service.
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