Drought orders: understanding restrictions and securing your activity

Every summer, the drop in river flows and groundwater levels leads prefects to issue restriction orders on water use. For a high-consumption professional, these orders can limit or even suspend certain uses overnight.

Understanding the four levels, knowing where to get information and above all anticipating through water frugality: that is the subject of this article.

1. How drought orders work

In France, it is the département prefect who issues the restriction orders, on the basis of a framework order. They apply to zones (river basins) and are triggered according to indicators: watercourse flows, groundwater levels, weather situation.

The measures intensify as the situation worsens, across four levels.

2. The 4 levels of restriction

• Vigilance: a call for frugality, without binding restriction.
• Alert: reduction of abstraction, partial bans (watering hours, certain washing).
• Reinforced alert: the same restrictions, applied more strictly.
• Crisis: only priority uses are authorised (drinking water, safety, health); agricultural and non-priority abstraction may be banned.

3. Who is concerned and which uses

The orders target all users: farmers (irrigation), industry (abstraction, including regulated ICPE sites), communities and individuals. The typically restricted uses: watering, washing (vehicles, roads), filling (pools, water bodies), certain abstractions from watercourses or groundwater.

4. Where to get information?

The official reference platform is VigiEau (vigieau.gouv.fr): it shows, address by address and zone by zone, the restriction level in force and the uses concerned. A simple reflex: regularly check the situation of your municipality during the summer.

5. Anticipate: water frugality

The best response to a restriction is to depend less on the resource. Several complementary levers:

• Reduce consumption (metering, leak hunting, water-efficient processes).
• Harvest & recycle: rainwater, greywater, reused treated wastewater (REUT).
• Close your process loops (industrial recycling, closed loop).
• Store to smooth demand peaks.

6. And in Belgium and the Netherlands?

In Belgium, drought management falls to the Regions: in Wallonia, governors can take restriction measures; in Flanders, the VMM leads drought monitoring (droogte). Recent summers have brought local restrictions, confirming that the subject is no longer the preserve of southern Europe. In the Netherlands, a country very advanced in water management, the subject is also a priority (waterschappen, Rijkswaterstaat): DIMM has a significant share of its customers there, alongside Belgium and France.

7. Who is this approach for?

Any high-water-consumption site — industry, food processing, agriculture, hospitality, communities — has an interest in anticipating. The stake is not only regulatory: it is business continuity that is at play when water runs short.

Conclusion

Drought orders are not an unavoidable fate: they can be anticipated. Understanding the four levels, following VigiEau (vigieau.gouv.fr), and above all engaging in a water-frugality approach (reduction, harvesting, recycling, REUT) helps secure your activity. The less you depend on the resource, the less you suffer restrictions.

The DIMM teams support professionals, in Belgium, France and the Netherlands, with water-recycling and optimisation solutions to face periods of strain.