Do private pools, very French passion, 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.
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After historical droughts in 2022 and 2023, the situation was also “already worrying” this year, in early July, according to the government.
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.
According to the Federation of Pool and SPA Professionals (FPP), their number was quintuplely 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 United States 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 near Cannes (South) – made a radical decision, with the frost of building permits for five years, including swimming pools. The community explained this measure by “a very tense situation with a risk of shortage” in water.
In Brittany too
At the other end of France, in a region less associated with drought, the 43 municipalities of Rennes Métropole (Brittany, West) 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. The pools will also have to be equipped with a rainwater recovery system with filtration for water upgrade.
This measurement is part of a much more global approach to reducing greenhouse gases (…) of preservation of natural water resources “, and of the fight against waterproofing, indicates to AFP the community, located in a department placed in mid-July in dry alert, with restrictions on water consumption.
“The challenge is to adapt to a new reality. This is anything but ideology, ”insists of the same source.
“I do not understand the measure of 25 m3,” reacts Gaël David, leader of the Pool 35 group, installed near Rennes. 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. Once full, “a swimming pool will use an average of 7 m3 each year,” she said. The equivalent of 47 days of drinking water consumption by a Frenchman.
By covering the swimming pool, “we will limit evaporation 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 Ministry of Economy and Finance does not have it.
“Only collective involvement will preserve essential uses: health, civil security, supply of drinking water and animal watering” in the event of drought, comments the ministry.
