In the context of global warming and the growing pressure on water resources, the Plaine Municipality wanted to set up a study to assess the possibilities of exploiting the non-drinking water (raw water) on its territory. It is true that Plaine Commune has sufficient water resources to possibly make it worth their while to exploite them for uses that don't require drinking water: ground water, rain water, the Seine, the Saint-Denis Canal...
Exploiting the raw water on Plaine Commune territory could allow economic savings not only for the municipality but also for citizens. Setting up sustainable management of the resource would also be an opportunity to rethink the role of water in the town and to imagine new uses for it (creation of urban cooling islands, recreational activities ...)
As the outcome of a call for tender, the Parisian Urbanism Agency, Apur, was selected to carry out the study which is divided into three sections:
- A forward looking inventory of needs and resources, which will be an opportunity to summarise existing data and studies on the Plaine Commune territory which deal with questions concerning raw water and also with the principal directions of urban evolution.
- The drawing up of scenarios for each area, taking into account all the specific urban and environmental aspects of the Plaine Commune territory
- A feasibility study on specific areas
In order to successfully achieve the study the Parisian Urbanism Agency - Apur proposes breaking off with purely technical methods in order to approach the issue of exploiting raw water with questions relevant to urbanism and the environment. This is the approach Apur used for its study on the future of the Parisian non drinking water network which led to a new attitude towards the non drinking water network in Paris being formed which recommended maintaining the network and even extending it rather than leaving it to become abandoned.
