GRAND AVIGNON The Water Collective and users invite themselves to the headquarters of the Agglomeration
Josiane has been living in her house in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, on the Montée de Bellevue, for about forty years. A few days before Christmas, the retiree receives her water bill. The amount is exorbitant: €7,739.
” When I saw the price I was like this“, she tells us, pointing to her trembling hand. The Suez delegate offers him an automatic installment at €80 per month over several years. While a first technician had assured him that there was no leak, a second plumber will detect an underground one, completely invisible. Faced with this observation, the invoice is finally canceled and Josiane only has to pay 439€, to her great slowdown. ” Luckily I met the water collective by chance and they helped me…“, she lets go.
For the Villeneuvoise, the troubles are behind. But the fight of the Grand Avignon water collective and the two user groups of Morières and Gard continues. This Wednesday, at 5 p.m., there were about twenty of them going to the headquarters of the Greater Avignon Agglomeration, to defend twelve cases of people who have problems with their water bill.
“On request a real billing and not estimated”
On February 16, the group of users from Villeneuve, Pujaut and Les Angles wrote a letter to the president of Grand Avignon. Through this letter, they list many problems encountered in water bills. The biggest problem being the estimates of the users’ water consumption. Everyone ended up with 19m3 on the first invoice. ” On request a real billing and not estimated. We decided to call on Grand Avignon because it was they who chose Suez as the delegate “, explains Joseph Ferré representing the Gard group.
All went to the reception of the Agglomeration and spoke with the director general of services. He assured them that they would be received by a qualified elected official on the file in the coming days. ” Where we agree is that the quality of the dialogue is not excellent today. (…) The change of delegate went through with difficulty, we are aware of that
“, recognized the director general of services.
Mary Meunier On January 1, 2021, the water service changed delegates in several municipalities in Greater Avignon Gard (Villeneuve, Les Angles, Pujaut, etc.). It is no longer Saur but Eau Grand Avignon (Suez) which is now in charge. Relations between the Water Collective and Greater Avignon are not looking good. The last requests of the collective were rejected by the administrative court of Marseille. In a press release, the Agglomeration stated: Since 2011, all the actions brought by the collective (14 in total) have been dismissed by the courts. (…) Justice, once again, recognizes that Greater Avignon is irreproachable in the application of the very complex rules governing this public service.“And to add:”
It is now time for the Collectif de l’eau to stop making a generalization of a few specific cases, and thus fool the population on the reality of the quality of water management.