Water restrictions in 8 departments

SUMMER-like temperatures in the middle of April have seen the imposition of summer-like water restrictions in eight departments.

Worst-hit by the drought are Seine-et-Marne, Essonne and Val-de-Marne which are on maximum restrictions with water being banned for irrigating agricultural crops. In Deux-Sèvres and Charente-Maritime the prefects have asked consumers and producers to reduce their usage. The Cher, Charente and Vienne are on low-level alert.

Ecologie minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said they had had three months of below-normal rainfall and there was a real risk of drought if there was no rain in the weeks to come.

More than half of France was being affected, above the line Biarritz-Strasbourg, with lower than normal groundwater levels.

She told broadcaster Europe 1 that the total rainfall since the start of the hydrological year in September showed sharply contrasting levels.

"It is OK in the south-east and the Mediterrranean coast but in the Paris basin, the north, the south-west and the west it is not OK. This is a critical time for crops to develop, perhaps a bit more in advance than normal because it has been so hot."

Farmers fear for their livelihoods as the soils dry out: those working terraced fields were coping but those on big arable fields were in trouble.

They said such weather was almost normal for the end of May, but not the end of April. It is normally where heavy rainfall builds up reservoirs for the summer and this year the vegetation is drying out the soils as there is so little moisture.

The geological survey Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières said the winter had been unusually dry in Aquitaine, the Channel coast, Champagne-Ardenne, Lorraine, Alsace, Franche-Comté and in the northern Alps. Brittany, Sologne and Touraine had seen just 25% of the normal rainfall.

Météo France has forecast largely sunny and warm weather until at least the end of next week for the northern and western part of the country.