Drought leads to French ban on garden swimming pools
Pyrénées-Orientales, which borders Spanish Catalonia, will be officially declared at drought "crisis" level from 10 May; bans on car-washing, garden-watering and pool-filling will also start then.
Sales of swimming pools are being banned in parts of France as drought conditions continue to grip the country, reports The Independent.
Pyrénées-Orientales, a department on the Mediterranean coast bordering Spain, will be declared at a “crisis” drought level next week.
“We need to get out of our culture of abundance,” France’s ecological transition minister Christophe Béchu said in a radio interview on Friday morning.
Filling existing swimming pools, car-washing and watering gardens will also be banned on 10th May in the region.
So far a handful of areas have declared “crisis” situations but overall, nearly half of France is facing some level of water shortages.
