An interministerial inspection report highlights “global failure” of the preservation of the quality of water intended for consumption with regard to pesticides, and recommends the ban “emergency” of their use in the most polluted groundwater catchment areas.
This report, carried out by the inspections of the ministries of health, ecological transition and agriculture, is dated June 2024 and was revealed Thursday November 14 by the online media Context.
The inspections were intended to analyze “the management of non-compliance of phytosanitary substances (pesticides, Editor’s note) and their metabolites (molecules resulting from the degradation of pesticides and potentially toxic, Editor’s note)” in water intended for human consumption.
The report notes “the overall failure to preserve the quality of water resources with regard to pesticides, despite some localized progress, which is often very slow”.
He proposes “to establish a zone subject to governmental constraint” and the implementation, “by decree”d’“an action program with objectives and results indicators in all catchment areas exceeding or close to the quality limits for pesticides and their metabolites”.
“In the event of failure to achieve quality objectives” At the end of this first phase, the report recommends a new decree, which will put in place, “without delay, a program of compulsory measures to restrict, or even ban, the use of plant protection products in these areas”. A measure “accompanied by compensatory allowances for the farmers concerned”.
“Regaining the quality of water intended for human consumption requires ambitious preventive measures, to be implemented urgently”estimate the inspections.
Ban pesticides in certain areas
Among these measures: banning pesticides from groundwater catchment areas “containing substances generating metabolites at risk of migration into waters in concentrations above the regulatory limit”, “increase the rate of the charge for diffuse pollution” et “expand your base to biocidal products”.
The national strategic plan of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) “should strengthen support for the evolution of practices”in “further promoting organic farming in catchment areas”.
The same goes for water agency programs called by the inspection report to increase “the means devoted to reducing pollution by pesticides”via par example “conversion to organic farming” or even “low-input crops”.
Last May, the then government presented its new pesticide reduction strategy – put on hold during the winter agricultural crisis –, Écophyto 2030.
France has never achieved its objective of halving the use of phytosanitary products, set in successive Écophyto plans since 2008. The new Écophyto 2030 version renewed this objective but with a new indicator and a new reference period (2011 -2013), measures much criticized by environmental NGOs.