Do private swimming pools still have their place in a France plagued by increased droughts? To preserve water resources, cities have decided to limit its size, or even ban them, with a difficult impact to measure.
In 2022 and 2023, France suffered from a historic drought. At the beginning of July 2025, barely in the summer started, the government was worried about an “already worrying” situation by the voice of the Minister of Ecological Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
Under the effect of climate change due to human activities and without a radical change in water management, the 2022 crisis could become the standard, recently warned the High Commission for Strategy and Plan.
For some cities, sobriety in water requires the questioning of private swimming pools. It is a very French passion: according to the Federation of Pool and Spa professionals (FPP), their number has quintuplet between 1999 and 2024 to reach 3.6 million, concentrated mainly in the southern regions.
“France even has the largest park of European buried swimming pools (1.73 million) and the 3rd in the world, just after the USA and Brazil,” said the federation. Their size has, however, decreased – 29 m² on average since 2019 – like land around houses.
However, in municipalities struck by a lack of chronic water, it remains too much. From January 2023, the community of communes of the Pays de Fayence, nine villages perched in the Var, made a radical decision, with the frost of building permits for five years, including swimming pools. The Council of the Community of Communes explained this measure by “a very tense situation with a risk of shortage” in water.
“Everything except ideology”
At the other end of France, in a region less associated with drought, the 43 municipalities of Rennes Métropole took the side in June to limit the size of the swimming pools to 25 m3, or about 3×6 meters and to make “compulsory a coverage system” to limit evaporation. They will also have to be equipped with a rainwater recovery system with filtration for water upgrade.
This measure is part of a much more global approach to reducing greenhouse gases and preservation of natural water resources, “said the community to AFP, while fighting against the waterproofing of soil.
“The challenge is to adapt to a new reality. This is anything but ideology, ”insists the community located in Ille-et-Vilaine, a department placed in mid-July on drought alert, with restrictions on water consumption.
« Implication collective »
“I do not understand the measure of 25 m3,” reacts Gaël David, leader of the Pool 35 group, installed in Ille-et-Vilaine and concerned by the decision of Rennes Métropole. For the entrepreneur, who has already planned to reduce the number of his employees dedicated to the construction of swimming pools, with this measure, “people will take on ground pools, which are not covered”.
For the FPP, the search for water savings does not justify attacking private swimming pools. “The size of the swimming pools has largely decreased over the years,” said AFP Joëlle Pulinx, general delegate. “A swimming pool will use an average of 7m3 each year”, once it has been filled, “she says. The equivalent of 47 days of drinking water consumption by a Frenchman.
“If we put a pool cover, we will limit evaporation up to 95 %,” continues Joëlle Pulinx, who insists on “conviviality” of private pools.
The only existing encrypted data on the water consumption of private swimming pools are those of the FPP. “The statistical data and studies service has to date has no data on the swimming pools and the volumes of water they represent,” says Bercy’s press office.
“Only collective involvement will preserve essential uses: health, civil security, supply of drinking water and animal watering” in the event of drought, concludes the ministry.
