Access
Access to improved water supply and to adequate sanitation in France is universal. However, not every household has access to water from the network or disposes its wastewater through sewers.
Concerning water supply, according to a survey undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1995, 370,000 permanent inhabitants in rural areas (0.5% of the total population) did not have access to piped water supply. They are supplied by 30,000 water points, most of them wells. The government plans to increase the access rate to 100%, improve water quality by establishing protection areas around wells and springs, and to increase the reliability of water supply by increasing production, storage and interconnection of existing networks.
Concerning sanitation, while most of the population is served by sewers, according to one source about 12 million people (18%) out of 65 are served by on-site sanitation systems such as septic tanks. The above-mentioned inventory by the Ministry of Agriculture notes that out of 40m inhabitants of rural areas – 25m permanent and 15m seasonal inhabitants – 21m are connected to a sewer system, 10.6m should be connected and 9.6m cannot be connected. The total of those not connected to sewers (20.2 million) is higher because it includes seasonal inhabitants. The government intends to increase the coverage to the sewer networks in rural areas, in particular in ecologically vulnerable zones.
Read more about this topic: Water Supply And Sanitation In France
Famous quotes containing the word access:
“Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. After all, one reckons, “they” don’t want me, “they” accept their own mediocrity and refuse my best, “they” don’t deserve me.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“The nature of women’s oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children—we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.”
—Saul Bellow (b. 1915)