Customer testimonial: Fontgombault regional water authority

The Fontgombault regional water authority supplies drinking water to 18 municipalities. It supplies nearly 5,800 consumers through an extensive network spanning 555 kilometres, operated by a team of eight employees.

Its operations cover the production, treatment and distribution of drinking water to the region’s residents. To this end, the authority strives to maintain continuity of service and the high standards of the water supplied.

As part of its infrastructure maintenance activities, the authority launched an initiative to reactivate the flushing cycle for its water towers. Some relatively old facilities do not have flow regulation systems that are efficient enough to allow these operations to be carried out without interrupting the water supply to consumers. The water authority has a water source (with a reservoir) and a water treatment plant located in Fontgombault. This source supplies around 50% of the network. It is supplemented by groundwater drawn from boreholes.

The project specifically focuses on the Sauzelles water tower, which supplies 10 of the 18 municipalities within the water authority, providing water to around 3,000 residents.

Located in the Indre department (36), in the Brenne region, sometimes referred to as the “land of a thousand ponds”, it is the tallest of the water authority’s seven water towers, standing at 40 metres high and delivering a pressure of 3.6 bar at the distribution pipe.

The task involved installing a bypass at the base of the structure, i.e. a pipe fitted with valves connecting the inlet and outlet of the water tower. This installation needed to be carried out using the under-pressure drilling technique, which allows work to be carried out without disrupting network operations.

This project addressed two critical requirements:

maintain continuous access to drinking water for users;

prevent any damage to the network, particularly damage caused by the ingress of air or limescale deposits in the event of the pipe being cut through completely, which could have caused technical and health risks.