This is a first: one of the largest European swimming pools in Toulouse is drained in September, as every year following the summer season, but this time its six million liters of water will be reused to water green spaces.
A ballet of tank trucks has been active since September 1 around the Alfred Nakache municipal summer swimming pool, whose chlorine treatment has been stopped. Located on the island of Ramier, this Art Deco style pool, built in the 1930s, is presented as the largest in Europe, with its 150 m long and 50 m wide. “For almost a century, we have been emptying this pool at the end of the summer, without asking any questions. This year we said to ourselves: ‘Why not recover the water?'”, declared the mayor LR from Toulouse, Jean-Luc Moudenc, to journalists.
To make it suitable for watering, we stopped treating the water from August 29, and waited for the natural evaporation of the chlorine.
The city councilor recognizes that “global warming and everything that is happening, leads us to ask ourselves new questions, and to find solutions”. Some 500 m3 of the 6,100 m3 of water in the basin have been pumped since Thursday, according to Olivier Perez, deputy head of the technical field at the sports department of the town hall.
“To make it suitable for watering, we stopped treating the water from August 29, and waited for the natural evaporation of the chlorine which occurs in contact with the air”, he explains. “This water will be introduced into a certain number of parks, gardens where recent plantings have been made, in particular (to water) young trees, which are less than three years old and which have suffered a lot with the heat wave this summer” , adds Mr. Moudenc.
Additional costs for the town hall
Fountains or ponds in public gardens will also be supplied with water from this swimming pool, which can accommodate more than 3,000 people a day in summer. In the square Charles de Gaulle, behind the Capitol, in the heart of Toulouse, Luc Sirven has just received a tank truck from the Nakache swimming pool. The technical agent of the town hall is delighted to water the shrubs, following the “real lack” of water in recent weeks.
The initiative implies additional costs for the town hall, indicates Mr. Moudenc, without however specifying the amount. But the mayor says he wants to repeat the experience next year, perhaps by widening the scope of action to other municipal swimming pools in Toulouse.