De Lutèce à la Défense, l’eau a façonné Paris autant que ses pierres.
Amoureux de la France et du patrimoine, ses trésors n’auront plus de secrets pour vous 👉https://bit.ly/4dnI1h1
Ce documentaire vous plonge dans un voyage millénaire, des aqueducs romains aux fontaines Wallace, de la pénurie médiévale à l’eau pétillante du XXIe siècle.
🛁 Thermes antiques, bassins monastiques, grands projets d’Haussmann, art public et générosité : la gestion de l’eau à Paris est une aventure politique, esthétique, sociale et écologique.
🚰 Les fontaines de Paris, longtemps vitales, sont devenues symboles : de la beauté, du pouvoir, de la mémoire urbaine.
Et aujourd’hui encore, elles coulent, parfois silencieuses, souvent invisibles… mais toujours précieuses.
PARIS AU PLURIEL – PARIS FONTAINE
© Tout droits réservés – AMP
#eau, #fontaines, #paris, #histoire, #architecture, #urbanisme, #culture
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Water is an essential element for life. Its mastery is
a crucial issue for human beings who have never ceased,
throughout history, to invent processes to preserve
and transport it as quickly and efficiently as possible. Le Puy is the most banal example. And Lake Duc, the most innovative way. This is still used today
to supply modern pipeline networks. La Fontaine, for her part,
plays a more contradictory role. Both a means of providing water to
a large population, it is also ornamentation,
body decoration and urban spectacles. Since ancient times, all civilizations have had
irrigation systems to transport
water and means of retention. Large stone troughs that store
drinking water and allow easy access to the precious resource. Thus, the discovery in the ruins of a
Sumerian temple of an ornate and sculpted stone basin dating from almost 20 centuries
BC gives us an idea of the birth of the first fountain. The civilization that truly
exploited the potential of fountains was the Romans. Indeed, according to the writings of the consul
Frontinus, ancient Rome was a veritable city of fountains. There are no fewer than 39
monumental buildings with honorary purposes, called Nymphaeums,
and nearly 600 decorated public pools. There is no document about the city
of Paris during Gallic Antiquity that has not, as we
know, transmitted historical cries. It was not until the Roman period,
around 5 years before Jesus Christ, that a spring water supply
was implemented. The Romans, when they settled
on the site of Paris and built temples, arenas and thermal baths, since you know that the Romans had
a taste for baths, the problem was how to supply these thermal baths. The most famous Parisian thermal baths are
the Cluny thermal baths, where the Museum of the Middle Ages is now located. And these baths were obviously
on a height and it was impossible to raise the water from the Seine. So, the only solution to supply these
thermal baths was to go and get water from a little higher up in altitude. And the Romans went to capture springs and
drain land near Rungis. And they brought these waters from Rungis by
an aqueduct, which is called the aqueduct of Lutèce, and which was a sort of canal
which ran along the right bank of the Bièvre to the narrowest point
of the valley, at the level of Arcueil-Cachan. And this pipeline crossed the
Bièvre valley on an aqueduct bridge to reach the left bank of the Bièvre. And this aqueduct entered Paris
at the level of the current Montsouris Park to then supply
the thermal baths on the left bank. So, it’s a gravity system. The water follows the slope
to go from Rungis to Lutetia. The canals of the Roman aqueduct are
made of amalgamated stones that form a pipe with a
diameter of 50 to 60 cm. They are open,
but still covered with a slab in the potentially polluting passages. The aqueduct follows the natural slope
and thus flows across the Bièvre valley,
then arrives in Paris to supply a large reservoir located
near the current Pantheon. It is not known whether there were
public fountains in Roman Lutetia, but by comparison with what can be
seen, for example, in Pompey, we can imagine that there were some
public fountains in the streets of Lutetia, but no trace of them has been kept. With the fall of the Empire and its
civilization, Roman works fell into oblivion. Water uses are returning
to what they have always been. For a long time, the Parisian population once again used exclusively water
from the Seine, water from the river, which was readily available,
of good quality and abundant. And as the city
grew and we moved further and further away from the river, we also used
another resource: the water from the Puys. In Les Puys, it was relatively easy to dig on the right bank because in fact, the water table on the
right bank is shallow. At a depth of 2 or 3 meters,
this water can be reached. Whereas on the left bank, you
have to dig 10, 15, 20 meters to get water. And this is what explains why, for a
long time, the city spread rather on its right bank, because it was
easy to dig wells there. It was not until the 12th and 13th centuries
that water captured at the source entered Paris again. Under Christian and Catholic influence,
monastic life developed. Abbeys were established,
such as the religious community of Saint-Martin-des-Champs and that
of the Saint-Lazare enclosure, which were established outside
the city, to the northeast. These religious communities were
established on the right bank, therefore quite far from the river,
and had water needs, since it should not be forgotten
that the religious communities had a vocation to care for the sick. And it turns out that these great abbeys,
these great religious establishments on the right bank,
owned fields, vineyards and crops on the heights where we are today
. And they had noted that on these heights,
the water was everywhere because of the geology of the land which is
composed at the top of an impermeable layer covered with a little sand. Obviously, rainwater passing
through the sand is stopped by this impermeable layer and the water
collects everywhere. And since the establishments were
below, the idea came
to drain this water from the heights of eastern Paris to bring it by gravity,
again following the slope, to these establishments on the right bank. These works were carried out from 11
1778, initially to supply religious communities on the right bank. Paris did not yet have a public fountain
and it was around the same time that King Philip Augustus,
who made Paris his capital, created a large central market. They became Les Halles. And it was in the heart of this market that
the first Parisian fountains were established. And where did the city
get its water? Like the religious, on the heights of
Belleville, Meigny-le-Montand, Pré-Saint-Gervais, Les Lilas,
to cite the current names. And for 500 years,
from the 12th century to the 17th century, the fountains of Paris were
only supplied by these springs in the east of Paris, which are called
the northern springs. The manholes are structures built
in the countryside at that time and locked, because they are
only intended to supply the town. The surrounding farmers are not allowed to do so
and face heavy penalties if they venture there. It was a system that was directly
inspired by what the Romans were doing. Each look fed the next
and then fed fountains, and each fountain fed
the next which fed the next. So obviously,
when we were at the end of the line, we can well imagine that in certain
neighborhoods, when there were years of drought or leaks, etc. The fountains in some neighborhoods were
no longer supplied for a month, two months, a year, two years, five years. It has always been a very low flow rate,
but these old springs have nevertheless been, for five centuries,
really punctuating the daily life of Parisians in the past,
since the Parisians, in their fountains, only had these
waters from the heights of eastern Paris. Water is precious. One of the last medieval public fountains
still visible, but which is no longer supplied,
is that of the Innocents. Built in the 12th century
by Philippe Auguste when he moved the Saint-Lazare fair to the current
Halles district, the fountain was built against the Church
of the Holy Innocents and its cemetery. Then, it was rebuilt in 1549
by the architect Pierre Lescaut and the sculptor Jean Goujon to celebrate
Henry II on his return from his coronation in Reims. It found its current location in the 18th
century, when the Cemetery of the Innocents was emptied to become a market square. Lescau is the architect of the Louvre,
of course, and Jean Goujon is truly the sculptor of
French grace, very much in the spirit of the Fontainebleau school,
Bély Fontain, that is to say the canons of these very elongated,
very tall, very sinuous women,
also in a situation of contrapostos, even if they are reliefs,
that is to say in a situation of gyration on itself, again evoking the waters. What is very important
is that you have the alliance of Renaissance architecture with
pilasters, therefore with a very homogeneous whole, and you have the introduction
of an animation of these facades, of this rigor, of this ordering
of symmetries on the four sides, the nymphs accompany you
in your rotational movement. That is to say that you always have
a nymph whose gaze, whose face is turned towards you,
whether she presents herself from the front or from the back and
turns towards you. So, there is a double
gyration which is desired by the artist and a gyration which is ultimately
at the initiative of the spectator. The principle of the basin basin which was added makes this convolution, this turn around the fountain,
even more natural. As for the left bank,
it was not until the construction of the Luxembourg Palace that
running water was installed. Marie de Medici,
who ordered its construction at the beginning of the 17th century,
was in fact a native of Italy, where water was available everywhere
in palaces and gardens. She instructed her engineers to
search for sources to supply her new Luxembourg Palace. And obviously, these engineers found traces of the old Agduc de Lutece and went back to Rungis,
captured springs in the same area where the Romans had done
to build a new aqueduct, called the Agduc Médicis or the
Arcueil aqueduct, the first stone of which was laid in 1613. The waters of this aqueduct arrived
in Luxembourg in 1623, and five years later, in 1628,
the first fountains on the left bank were supplied. So, there is no fountain on the
left bank before 1628, before the 17th century. Witness to this new abundance is
the Medici Fountain, built in 1620, but considerably
reinterpreted in the 19th century. Even today,
in the process of being restored, it tells the story of man’s struggle against
nature, the domestication of the wild in the name of civilization. Nature and culture,
finally, this fountain. If it had to be called anything other
than the Medici Fountain, this would be it. In addition, it is well located
in a wooded area. So, that’s kind of what we
expect from the fountain. The fountain is the irruption in the heart
of the city of natural forces coming from the countryside. It is Paris which, thanks to its waterways, is ultimately supplied by nature. Alongside all this,
at the beginning of the 17th century, particularly to supply
royal establishments like the Louvre, the idea was also had of introducing
a bit of technology this time, of no longer entrusting the water supply
to simple gravity, to simple slopes. And thanks to Flemish engineers, in particular, pumps were installed in Paris. These were water mills whose blades and
wheels drove pumps that raised water from the river
to a certain height in a building. And from this high point of
the pump building, the water could go to supply,
well in particular, the Louvre Palace. In the 18th century,
with the invention of the steam engine, fire pumps, in other words,
coal-fired pumps, were installed on the banks of the Seine. First there is the Chaillot one,
at the current Maison de la Radio, then the Gros Caillou one,
at the Invalides. Both pump water from the Seine
to feed large reservoirs which then supply water to Paris. We can see that these two large
fire pumps were installed in the 18th century downstream from Paris,
which received all the waste from the city, hospitals, etc. Because everything was thrown into it. It is important to note that before the modern
sewer system in Paris, developed on the initiative of Prefect Haussmann,
all the city’s dirty water flowed into the river in Paris. The well-known traveler’s illness
known as tourista was for a long time the curse of Parisians. For its part, the fountain is increasingly becoming
a monumental work that serves as an ornament in the city. It embodies a discourse,
is part of a dynamic of urban spectacles like here,
the fountain of the Four Seasons, built in 1745 by Edmé Bouchardon,
in honor of King Louis XV. The building cost a fortune
for the time, and earned him the mockery of Diderot,
who mocked that such gigantism could only produce a thin stream of water. Paris is therefore barely supplied. In fact, you have to see that Paris
has always lacked water. Parisians have always been thirsty. There have always been, in what we call
the old waters, very low flows. So, the beginning of what we call
new waters which finally brought a significant quantity of water
to the city of Paris, was the construction work
on the Lourdes Canal and the Bassin de la Villette. The Ourcq Canal is not only
a navigable canal, but above all it is also an aqueduct. And the Bassin de la Villette is a large
water reservoir that could have supplied a whole host of fountains. And it was only from this
time that Paris stopped dying of thirst. At the beginning of the 19th century,
from another angle, Napoleon undertook to develop the city. In 1802 he launched the creation
of the Parisian canals. He had water from the Beuvronne brought
to a large basin at La Villette, which was filled with water
for the first time in 1808. Then, in the 1920s,
the Lourdes canal was extended, now providing sufficient water flow
to allow navigation into the basin. From then on, the drinking water resource is
no longer a problem. The Fountain then takes on an ornamental form
which testifies to a certain fairly new social luxury and reflects the desire
to beautify and develop the city. First example,
the Palmiers Fountain, which dates back to 1880. With this Palmiers fountain,
we really have a fairly broad panorama of what
the articulation of politics and the question of the beautification
of Paris could be, since it begins with a commemoration of Napoleon’s victories. And then, it translates into the creation of theaters around it, with urban planning, and of course, the rue de Rivoli, etc. This translates into a desire to order, there too, the city around a landscape of fountains, an aquatic landscape,
at the same time rest, a source of influence of nature
on urban behavior, and also a way of showing the power
of the city officials, whether it be the government or the city officials of Paris,
to provide their population with water and health elements. The Cité Trévise, in the current ninth
arrondissement, dates from 1840 and is part of his
work in the establishment of Paris. It is a private city of luxury housing
intended for the elites of the July Monarchy, then that
of the Second Republic. The apartments are equipped
with gas and running water. In the center of the city, a fountain
is installed as a pure pleasure. We invent visual charm and
sound pleasure to attract buyers. The famous
Saint-Michel fountain was erected in 1860. Water is now only a pretext for the
spectacle, here, religious, biblical. It was originally planned to install
a huge statue of Napoleon I in the square, but
this was abandoned in favor of a Saint Michael slaying the dragon,
representing the fight between good and evil. The fountain is built against a wall, which
also faces north, meaning in the shade. Gabriel Davieu, its architect,
seems to have used polychromy to counter the unattractive lighting
from which the location suffered. This polychromy struck the minds
of the time as a break with the classical spirit of Greek Antiquity,
that is to say the whiteness of polished and smooth marble. Now, it is funny to know today
that the whiteness of ancient Greek statuary is a pure invention. The sculptures were actually painted
in bright colors that did not stand the test of time. The beautification and modern development
of Paris continued with the entry into the scene of the major works of the two
Eugènes, Haussmann and his engineer Belgrand,
from 1853, which would bring good quality drinking water,
deserted in abundance to Parisians,
by capturing sources far from Paris: Versance, Fontainebleau, Dreu,
Provins, which supplied large reservoirs of drinking water in Ménilmontand,
Montsouris, Saint-Cloud. And it is still on this system developed
in the 19th century that Paris is supplied today. So this spring water
is supplemented by purified, potable river water. And even today, we still have excellent quality water in Paris
thanks to this work initiated by Prefect Haussmann. Water now flows freely in Paris,
and the Bassin de la Villette, originally a holiday resort,
will quickly transform into an important commercial port. Urban planning accompanies
industrialization. On the left bank,
the construction of a temple dedicated to the four parts of the world, called the Observatory, was undertaken at this time,
the garden of which it occupies and to which it refers. Designed by Gabrielle Davieu, it brought together
several artists in its creation. Jean-Baptiste Carpeau for the
central part, four women supporting the globe, adorned with the Zodiac belt,
made by Eugène Legrain. Emmanuel Frémier created the horses,
turtles and fish. Louis Vihimeau took care of the frieze and the garlands of the Then, the fountain of the Observatory is quite striking. So, it is one of those fountains,
there are others that work on a principle
of analysis, an analogy between the microcosm and the macrocosm,
between the human and the cosmos. That is to say, these women,
allegorically, symbolize the parts of the world, the continents
that support the Earth. Carpeau initially had a first idea
which was to represent the four cardinal points, north, south, east, west. And that meant a cross, in the end. And Carpeau, who is still the man
of dance, understood that this arrangement was
not in the spirit of the fountains, ultimately. And that’s why he had the idea
of substituting these dancing women for the four cardinal points . I remember that Jules Claretti,
a critic of the time, spoke of wild women, screaming women, ugly women, etc. Because this kind
of realism of Carpeau was shocking. Africa still wears the shackles
of slavery on its feet. Even if the second chain is broken,
America tramples on the chain and seems to keep the
African continent under its yoke. When you look at this fountain,
you are struck by the ascending motif. It is important to understand that a fountain
is defined by a flow, from bottom to top. The fountain
itself is tiered, that is to say it creates an
upward movement specific to architecture. And so, these two
contradictory movements, with the curtain of water which will ultimately encompass all of that. So there you have it, this opposition,
this very complex dialectic, between the horse that springs up
and then the water that falls back down. And this harmony, in fact, which makes it
an absolutely endless cycle of life. But the vertigo of a city
richly supplied with spring water was put on ice during the conflict between France
and Prussia, which led to the siege of Paris in October 1870. During the fighting,
many aqueducts were destroyed, depriving the population of water. In this context,
a wealthy English heir living in Paris, the philanthropist Richard Wallace,
designed a model of a fountain, the reproduction of which he financed
and its installation in the streets. It is the famous Wallace fountain,
with its four caryatids, which, from 1872,
would flourish in Parisian squares and become an icon of the city. Richard Oualas was both
a philanthropist and an aesthete. A person very interested
in heritage issues. And he wanted to leave the city
of Paris a real heritage. And a heritage that embodies water,
both fresh water and sea water. That’s why
we find dolphins and tridents on the Wallace fountains. And in fact, these fountains must have
embodied very strong values for Richard Wallace. Kindness, simplicity,
charity and sobriety. And the idea was that Parisians would
gather around these fountains and that through the fountains and the caryatids,
they themselves would want to share together, to be sober by consuming
tap water instead and to be generous with each other. It was also a gesture of generosity
towards the city of Paris, more generally,
by providing accessible and free drinking water to
everyone in the city. And he designed this fountain with the idea
that it would only be used by Parisians
in the form of drinks. And that’s why, for example,
we have the four caryatids. The space between each of the caryatids is
designed so that a horse’s head, for example, cannot
pass through to drink. In the same way, these caryatids,
which constitute both a means of placing four people around this
fountain and of making it a place of conviviality,
make it possible to prevent other people from coming to serve themselves at the fountain for
purposes other than that of drinking. In other words, he invented
the first drinking fountain. From the very beginning, the Oualas fountains were
installed on the Parisian drinking water network. They were supplied
by the drinking water network. The first ones were installed earlier,
with the exception of the one in Belleville, in the south of Paris.
For what ? Because it corresponded to the time when we
developed the new Parisian water network , by fetching
distant waters, notably those which came from the Sens region
and those which came from the Fontainebleau region,
and which we also find under our feet in the Montsouris reservoir. And so they were installed there,
which meant that they were supplied directly by spring water, which, at
the time, was not subject to any treatment. Today we count 106 fountains,
oualasses in Paris, Paris. We have four models. The best known is that of the caryatids. But we have nearby
the Column Fountains. There are two in Paris. One can be seen, notably at the exit
of the Pont Mirabeau, in the 16th arrondissement. And then there is a wall light fountain. It is almost unique in Paris. It is in Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire,
on the wall of the botanical garden. Today
it is not in operation as
repair work is being carried out. But this fountain was designed
as a basin to allow more people to come and drink. And we were near a hospital. So the idea
was that people could come and enjoy this water when they left
the hospital or before going back in. And then, we have small fountains
that we find in Parisian gardens. Since then, the city of Paris
has developed its own models. So, we only have a few
that remain from these principles of fountain terminal with push button. These fountains were
truly innovative. At the end of the 19th century, they became,
over time, an element of Parisian heritage and lost their
drinking water dimension. The proof is
that in the surveys we were able to carry out, only 16%
of users of public spaces admitted to going to drink at the fountains
because spontaneously, for them, it was not drinking water,
but it was a heritage and a historical monument. And so we have a real challenge
in bringing Parisians back to these Wallace fountains and making them
rediscover the quality of this water and the fact that they can drink it anywhere. We still have 106 in Paris out of
the 230 which are directly in Parisian public spaces. It’s a real opportunity
in our journeys, whether we are joggers, walkers, strollers,
or with children. When you’re wandering around the city,
being able to stop at a number of fountains, like the one below,
for example, is a real stroke of luck. Haute-farée, the city of Paris, has chosen to give a new place to the Wallace fountains,
to reinstall them in the Parisian universe by giving them a modernity that they had
when Richard Wallace created the first drinking fountain. How will this modernity be implemented? First of all, in a sustainable city,
water flow is still a problem because it
means that water is potentially wasted. So, we are currently installing push buttons on prototypes to
control the amount of water needed. And at the same time, in a city
that has to endure climate change, cooling is a key element. And to refresh, nothing is better,
especially than low-pressure misting. And so, this is what we are going to
install as corollas on the fountains, with the constant concern of preserving this
heritage, of not modifying it, therefore of dressing it so that the elements
come to integrate into it. The circuit of a fountainvoilasse,
it is made up, you see it here, of the power supply which comes
from the network from below. Then you have the counter here,
which allows you to count the volumes that pass through this Oualas fountain. Behind the meter, here,
you have the water supply circuit which is branched
here on two circuits. You have the first one which is the circuit
of the drinking fountain, which goes up in one of the caryatids
which goes up inside, which passes into the dom here, which falls back
here into a game which is in the center. Then you have the second circuit
which passes into another caryatid which always goes back up into the dom
and which comes to feed these barrels here. Here they are in prototype form,
so they are relatively visible. And we work to integrate this as
harmoniously as possible and make it as discreet as possible. You obviously have the drain
that passes through the center, which allows all the water to be collected. Haute Paris carries out
periodic and regular quality checks on Wallace fountains, and more. So, we have an
internal laboratory that monitors water quality and alerts us if
the quality parameters are exceeded. To reassure Parisians,
we have added mineralization to the water, especially on the Wallace fountains, but not only that. So, you have all around
the fountain, you have plates, so the potability, the mineralization,
the origin of the water as well. To always reassure,
say that it is potable water, that it is good water to drink. And at the same time,
we have the indications on the quality parameters which is the water which is
served through the fountain. So, there is a quality control that is
done both on the drinking fountain part and also on the misting
to ensure that there is no risk of injury on it. So there you have it, quality control
is done on these two aspects. The Ouala fountain was created with
a mold and a number of pieces that come together. It is in three parts: the base,
the caryatids and the dome. The model was designed by Le Bourg with
a foundry located in the Metz region. This foundry still exists;
it has the molds and continues to make the fountains. Classically, the Wallace fountain
is in the color of Parisian green monuments, the famous
Maurice columns, for example, or the Parisian benches. However, there were
some experiments and three fountains
of different colors were installed. So, we have a pink one
which is located on rue Neuve-Tolbiac. We have a yellow one which is located
at the foot of the Grands Moulins. And then we have a red one which is located
on Avenue d’Yvry. And then afterwards, it gave me ideas. We have one that is not very far from here,
in particular, which is blue. And then we have, from memory, a purple one
also in the East of Paris. These are symbols to show
that the fountain can be integrated into the city in other ways. And we were able to identify through this
that if we had slightly different signage for our fountains, we could
attract Parisians to them. And that is the challenge we are
developing today with the
Parisian municipality, to make these fountains much more visible and to invite
the public to follow a step-by- step process that will lead them to these fountains
where they can drink the good water of Paris. Innovation has become the key word
in water distribution in Paris. Nothing is too complicated
for fountains, even offering sparkling water in Montsouris Park. What is the sparkling fountain in
Montsouris Park? It is a technical room of
around 5 square meters, in which you have a cooling unit
which allows the water to be cooled, to which carbon dioxide is added
to be able to make the mixture. And you have, on each side of the building,
two distribution panels which allow
water to be delivered on demand. You have control buttons. With industrial modernity,
drinking good quality water has become commonplace in Paris. The network, inherited from the major works
of the 19th century, is still in operation today. It has even been reinforced and secured. So, the Montsouris reservoir is the second reservoir that was built as part of the
Paris water supply project, which was led at the time by Prefect
Haussmann and by the engineer who was responsible for the first
Parisian public water service, Eugenie de l’Avène Belgrand. This reservoir was built at the same
time as the diversion of the sources of the Avane to Paris,
that is to say between 1869 and 1874. It is a reservoir which has a capacity
of 202,000 cubic meters of water. The tank is on two levels. We have a lower level, there
we are on the upper level. The waters no longer come
from the Havana Water Supply, since the waters of Havana,
having been subjected to pollution over time, particularly from pesticides,
are now treated at Lail et Rose, upstream from Paris,
where they will join the waters of the Seine which are treated at Orly. And so, now
only the waters from far away arrive here, which are the meeting of three agducts, the Loin, the region of Nemours, the Lunin, not very far from Nemours also,
in the region of Grez, in particular. And then, finally, the waters from the
Provins region, which are gathered together in the Fontainebleau forest,
which have been treated upstream, which arrive in Paris,
have ultraviolet treatment, and then arrive directly
from Porte d’Arcueil here, at the Montsouris reservoir,
to flow through tarpaulins into the two-level reservoir. So they will move from the
upper reservoir to the lower reservoir. This guarantees us a
continuous, highly diversified supply in Paris, with the possibility of possibly
coming to the aid of our other players in the surrounding areas. If we had pollution, for example,
of the Seine, the Orly plant benefits from a raw water reserve of 300,000
cubic meters and it can isolate itself from the Seine and therefore continue to produce
for two days, for example, on average production. Furthermore, you need to have some ideas about
the major food figures in Haute-Paris. Today we are around 500,000
cubes consumed per day, or 500 million liters
consumed per day by Parisians. We have a production capacity
that is more than double. This means that this capacity
allows us, in particular, to carry out major projects. We are shutting down our Agducs
to overhaul them with a very significant investment plan. Today, we are completing work on our
Orly factory . We will soon be
working on the Joinville factory. And so, the capacity we have
allows us to link together the different works and maintain our
industrial heritage at a very high level of efficiency. The Parisian system is very secure. It works on several levels,
so the five power vectors we were talking about. Of course, our quality control. But in the event of a major crisis, in Paris, we have developed, with the prefecture and the city of Paris,
five water points which are water points which will draw from a
deep underground water table, which is a water table which is thousands
and thousands of years old. This water table has the characteristic
of being completely protected from pollution levels. So we equipped these water points,
these fountain collection points to enable us to mobilize
this water very, very quickly if there was a major crisis. In this case, Eau de Paris
would no longer be the manager. We will make available and
support the State and the city of Paris in the distribution of this
water to Parisians. This therefore provides additional security
for Paris, but also for the surrounding areas. Haute-paris is a public company of the city of Paris. The city of Paris chose to create it
in January 2010 to take over management of the entire
Parisian water supply system. We are what we call
an integrated operator. This means that water is taken
from the natural environment, from springs or at the foot of treatment plants. We will then move it through actions
, through channels. We will check its
quality throughout its transport. We will also carry out analyses in addition to
the continuous monitoring that we can do. We will then store it in reserves
and distribute it through more than 2,000 kilometers of pipeline
under our feet in Paris. And then we will manage our
relationship with Parisian clients. We have a specificity in Paris,
which is that Parisian customers are not necessarily Parisians themselves,
since we only have 80,000 subscribers. They are the managers of
Parisian buildings and then they themselves will bill Parisians for their
water consumption. We have 60 jobs in Paris, in Haute-Paris. We also do
engineering project management. We design our processing plants. We carry out research programs
because we have the first quality and
public research laboratory in France. We are also a laboratory
that is used by the Ministry of Health for biotox
when there are detections of pollution or risks of pollution,
we call on Haute-Paris to carry out our own analyses. We have our
control post for the entire Parisian system, the Command and Control Center,
which will coordinate surface water and distribution in Paris. The idea is to always guarantee
the same pressure to Parisians. We owe them 25 meters,
the height of a Haussmannian building, at the foot of their street and that we can
guarantee continuous quality. All this without any
power outages for Parisians. The Paris municipality
has launched a climate plan. It is committed to the sustainable city. Haute-Paris is a player
in all of these plans. You see it around us, we have
a differentiated management of spaces. We will preserve the fauna and flora. We will work with farmers
on catchment areas to achieve
sustainable water and agriculture by reducing inputs and
helping farmers adopt different agricultural approaches. All of this is taken care of. And as Eau de Paris is a
public operator and an operator of the ecological transition, it always goes further. Still in the same logic,
the water that we inherit today, the heritage that we inherit, all
of it, we must bequeath to future generations in an
improved state compared to what we ourselves were able to have. That is to say, by having
been able to deal with pollution issues and by not adding
new difficulties, new pollution to what exists today. As a public company
and also within the framework of the policy that the Paris municipality is
implementing, we have a genuine territorial approach. We are present in five regions, 12
departments, and more than 300 municipalities. Our challenge through this presence
is to support these municipalities and to establish ourselves as a true
partner. There are, of course, agricultural stocks. It is important to support
farmers and to do so with local communities. But in the same way,
we listen to the territories. And for example,
when you have drought phenomena that develop,
they can directly impact local needs with
river levels that drop or with spring levels that drop. Well,
we systematically anticipate these situations by returning to the natural environment
the sources that we can capture rather than taking them and
bringing them to Paris. The challenge is really to listen
and be in full solidarity with the territories. Nowadays, while the supply of
drinking water is no longer a problem in technically
advanced cities, preserving the resource
remains an important socio-political issue. In fact, the vital liquid is
highlighted, magnified through works with a pronounced aesthetic, like here,
on the forecourt of La Défense, a major economic center located near Paris. The water element is part
of an urban perspective which affirms a certain quality of life. Fountains can also be placed
as an important marker of the country’s cultural identity. And our famous Wallace fountains
are the perfect example. Present in Israel, Mozambique and even
the United States, they make Paris and France shine throughout the world. The result of health needs,
they have become the icon of the city and are part of popular culture,
just like the Arc de Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower, for example. Thus, over the centuries,
the perception of the role of the fountain has continued to evolve. Originally a distributor of the benefits
of water, a source of life to irrigate crops
and quench thirst, the fountain has become a water feature, a
spectacle, a figure of modern life and a symbol of its comfort. Indeed, whether it is monumental
in the middle of a square or tiny at the bend in an alley,
it remains today an essential emblem of our
history and that of Paris. Parisian fountains, and especially
ornamental fountains rather than drinking fountains,
bear the flouctouat neg mergitur. In other words, the motto of the city
of Paris: float, but do not sink. It is a direct reference to what
Paris was like and what Lutetia was like in other periods, very oriented around the river
and very oriented towards the function of the merchants
who lived around the river and who used the river
to bring in goods. It remains an extremely strong motto,
including for the Parisian public, because it anchors everything that is Paris. In other words, a city that will stay afloat
and always move forward, like the movement,
ultimately, of the Seine. We go from upstream to downstream,
and Paris is modernizing. Paris is now a sustainable city
that thinks about future generations and is part of a plan for these future generations.