Months into a severe drought, authorities in the French overseas department of Mayotte have ordered taps shut off two days out of three. The island archipelago in the Indian Ocean is experiencing its worst dry spell in nearly 30 years.
Starting 4 September, Mayotte's water supply will be cut off for 48 hours out of every 72, leaving residents with just 24 hours to use their taps every three days.
The cuts are the latest and most extreme measures taken in response to the worst drought to hit Mayotte since at least 1997.
Mayotte, the poorest department in France, has been dangerously low on water for over three months now.
Sparse rainfall resulted in exceptionally low levels in the islands' reservoirs, which they rely on to get through the dry months of May to November.
By the end of this year's rainy season, the two main reservoirs were less than half full. In comparison, at the same point in 2022 they were filled to around 98 percent.
Structural problems
Mayotte's water infrastructure is also plagued by chronic problems that exacerbate shortages.
Around a quarter of the supply is lost to leaks and other distribution issues, the general manager of services at Mayotte's water company SMAE, Ibrahim Aboubacar, told RFI in May.
And intermittently interrupting the supply, as the island is forced to do to manage shortages, adds to the strain on ageing pipes.
Investment in Mayotte's water network has not kept pace with demand, Aboubacar says, which is rising by around 2,000 cubic metres a year as the population grows.
Around 30 percent of the population – at least 100,000 out of 300,000 residents and counting – does not have access to running water at home, notably the thousands of people living in the main island's crowded shantytowns.
Such households depend instead on collecting untreated water, exposing them to health risks, or siphoning off supplies via illegal connections, leaving even less for paying customers.
Rolling cuts
Even people who are hooked up to the system have not been able to count on getting water consistently.
The past few months have seen rolling cuts, increasingly long and frequent as the summer went on. In May, taps were being shut off three nights per week; in June, it went up to four nights, which in July became seven nights in the busiest areas and three days everywhere else.
Under the latest schedule, announced by the prefecture on 24 August, water will be shut off throughout the department at 4pm and will resume 48 hours later. In the capital Mamoudzou and certain other key areas, the taps will go off five nights a week from 4pm to 8am and for 36 hours straight once a week.
By now, residents are accustomed to filling up bottles, buckets, tubs and other containers to help them see out the cuts.
"If we get home after the water has been shut off, we wash using the bottles we've stocked," Rachdah Charifoudine, who lives in Mamoudzou, told French news agency AFP in May.
"It's not practical, but we don't have a choice."
Hunt for solutions
SMAE says it is conducting maintenance on Mayotte's water system, tracking down leaks in need of repair. Work has also begun to look for untapped sources underground.
Authorities confirmed this week that they have given the go-ahead to build a second desalination plant and another reservoir, and in the meantime they are carrying out emergency interventions that they hope will generate additional water supplies before the end of the year.
They include installing several machines to treat seawater via reverse osmosis, ranging from small devices producing up to 70 cubic metres of drinking water a day, to a large-scale version, to be set up on the west coast of the main island that will ultimately produce 1,000 cubic metres daily.
NGOs are also involved in efforts to provide safe water in Mayotte, where shortages push people to turn to untreated water, despite the danger to their health.
Contaminated water is a major factor in outbreaks of diseases such as typhoid that are far more widespread in Mayotte than in mainland France, Anthony Bulteau of development non-profit Solidarités International told RFI.
His group has been testing a portable pump and filter system that allows river water to be treated in a bucket for household use. The process removes more than 99 percent of bacteria, Bulteau says.
Health authorities in Mayotte this week launched a vaccination campaign against typhoid fever and are monitoring for cases of waterborne diseases hepatitis A, cholera and polio.
"This water crisis must not become a health crisis," warned the head of Mayotte's regional health agency, Olivier Brahic.
