Europe 1 with AFP / OPHELIE VINOT / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP
5.08pm, November 25, 2024
The Mayotte water union and the prefecture of Mayotte announced that water cuts would be extended again from this Monday, within the French department of the Indian Ocean, which is plagued by regular episodes of drought and rising temperatures. consumption. Tap water will now be cut off for up to two and a half days a week.
Water cuts have been extended again since Monday in Mayotte, a French department in the Indian Ocean plagued by regular episodes of drought and rising consumption, announced the Mayotte water union and the prefecture. Until now cut off for 26 consecutive hours every two days, tap water is now inaccessible for 30 hours, according to the schedule published by the Mahoraise Water Company (SMAE).
Fill the tanks
Depending on the sector of the island, tap water will now be cut off for up to two and a half days per week. The objective is to stem the increase in consumption estimated at 5% per year by State services, while the French archipelago is affected by record demographic growth and technical water cuts have multiplied in recent years. recent weeks.
At the end of the dry season, which usually extends from April to November, catchments in rivers and underground drilling are less efficient, which means that the island's two artificial basins, currently full to capacity, have to be overused. 30-40%. In this context, “the reservoirs of the water purification units are emptying, which causes technical outages”, specified the prefecture of Mayotte. These have also multiplied in recent weeks, in Mamoudzou and in the north of the archipelago.
“The extension of water cuts will allow the reservoirs to fill and avoid these technical cuts,” underlines the prefecture. On the night of November 11 to 12, a technical incident caused the shutdown of the Ourovéni water treatment plant, depriving half of the 321,000 inhabitants of water for more than 24 hours.
