The department is seeking to manage watercourses so that they overflow before reaching urban areas.
In Charente and Charente-Maritime, twice as much rain fell in the last twelve months than in a normal year. Faced with this situation and repeated floods, the territory is trying to adapt with a philosophy that goes against the practices operated for decades: accepting that water invades the streets, to restore the river’s “freedom “.
The answer also involves developing waterways, including the smallest ones outside cities. During the post-war period, they were distorted, made wider and rectilinear. But, over the past ten years, the method has changed.
“We de-waterproofed this space”
In this river, “we brought back stones”, tells BFMTV the president of the single union of the Angoumois river basin, Mathieu Tallon, on the edge of a tributary of the Charente. “A sector restored since 2019,” he specifies.
Objective? Restore a winding course to it and allow it to overflow before urban areas. It is a question of “promoting overflows on the right bank at the level of agricultural plots which today are not valued by the owner”, he indicates Mathieu Tallon.
Cities also have to do their part. In Angoulême, in Charente, the town hall has decided to remove the bitumen from schoolyards. “We dewatered this space, we greened it, with the aim of being able to absorb rainwater,” explains Pascal Monier, deputy in charge of town planning and ecology.
“We have to enter into a logic where we capture this rainwater by plot, we do not reinject it, neither into the networks, nor into our houses which could be flooded,” he says.
In the commune, around 500 houses are classified as at major risk of flooding because of the Charente.
Camilia Giudice and Vincent Hénin with Baptiste Farge
