The water aggre­gate is one of the sev­en ter­ri­to­ri­alised the­mat­ic aggre­gates of the Oise Met­ro­pol­i­tan Pole (PMO). Launched in June 2019, it reflects on var­i­ous cur­rent issues relat­ing to the treat­ment of urban and indus­tri­al waste water, the man­age­ment of sur­face and under­ground water resources and the pro­duc­tion of drink­ing water. 

Edv­ina Lamy, lec­tur­er-cum-research sci­en­tist, qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­al­ly in water treat­ment and process­es, was appoint­ed the aca­d­e­m­ic in charge last June. Its voca­tion? “The chal­lenge for the region is to cre­ate vol­un­tary coop­er­a­tion between com­pa­nies, acad­e­mia and local author­i­ties in order to devel­op a net­work of skills to man­age water resources as effi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble and to respond to the eco­nom­ic, soci­etal and envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges of this spe­cial­ty” recalls Edv­ina Lamy who, for almost a year now, has been set­ting up col­lab­o­ra­tive projects that bring togeth­er pub­lic and pri­vate part­ners inter­est­ed in the chal­lenges of the “Water” sec­tor, i.e., the search for sav­ings, val­ue cre­ation or adap­ta­tion to cli­mate change, to name but a few examples.

Very concrete projects

With six meet­ings already organ­ised with­in the part­ner struc­tures, the projects that have been put for­ward are already tak­ing shape. Among them, the reuse of waste-water from the waste-water treat­ment plants as an alter­na­tive source of water resources. Or the man­age­ment of ground­wa­ter via ground­wa­ter man­age­ment and the use of rain­wa­ter for a sus­tain­able build­ing. “It seems nec­es­sary to estab­lish an over­all strat­e­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing the need to have a ter­ri­to­r­i­al project that allows the “water” issue to be tak­en into account as a whole, includ­ing a mul­ti­tude of small water man­age­ment projects, but also to rea­son on the scale of the basin for a project of gen­er­al inter­est, which does not tar­get a sin­gle user. There is indeed a need for coop­er­a­tion between the ter­ri­to­ries to respond to the con­cepts of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment” There is clear­ly a need for ter­ri­to­ries to coop­er­ate in order to com­ply with the con­cepts of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment”, asserts Ludv­ina Lamy. 

Driving a full, innovative and dynamic policy

This aggre­gate brings togeth­er the lab­o­ra­to­ries of UTC and Uni­LaSalle: UTC-TIMR, UTC-Avenues, UTC-GEC and AGHYLE. The local author­i­ties are also very present: ARC, ACSO, CC2V, CCPE, SMOA and DDT Oise. Among the indus­tri­al play­ers, the aggre­gate can already count on Veo­lia Water. “On the ter­ri­to­ries, a whole sec­tor is thus in action in order to build a dynam­ic of inno­va­tion around the ques­tion of water that best meets the eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal stakes of our time”, con­cludes Edv­ina Lamy. It is impor­tant not to for­get that, in all cas­es, reg­u­la­to­ry bar­ri­ers remain depend­ing on the use of this resource. But each time, it is a ques­tion of work­ing on demon­stra­tion sites to prove the solu­tion pro­vid­ed in terms of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. It is the future that is being pre­pared in this way on the ground.“re that is being pre­pared in this way on the ground.