Stopping soil sealing
France's water infrastructure is dense and globally efficient, with 21,000 wastewater treatment plants and 380,000 km of sewerage networks.
However, built according to an "all-pipe" policy aimed at evacuating wastewater and rainwater out of cities, these assets are no longer suited to the combined management of rainwater and "grey" water. With the increasing occurrence of heavy rainfall, networks quickly become saturated, causing flooding and uncontrolled polluted discharges into rivers. What's more, waterproofing soils dries them out and eliminates local recharge of aquifers by rainfall.
Directly implicated, soil sealing makes many areas vulnerable to this natural hazard: rainwater, which cannot infiltrate the soil, runs off and overloads undersized drainage networks.
Water Agencies - the French government - and local authorities are working towards infiltration by making soils permeable, to the benefit of local populations and the environment.
In a context of climate emergency
Climate change has become a very concrete, inescapable scientific reality, with which the world is confronted. The various meteorological bodies, including Météo-France and the European Copernicus service, have recorded very high average temperatures over the last decade: the heat record has been broken every month since the beginning of 2023.
The consequences of global warming will include more intense heatwaves and torrential rains, which will exacerbate the damage caused by soil sealing and large loads of untreated pollution. First and foremost, hydrocarbon pollution, whose environmental and health impact is underestimated.
In this context, better management and integration of water in our territories is a definite advantage in countering the effects of climate change. More specifically, a policy of sustainable, integrated stormwater management is essential, as water infiltration helps to prevent flooding, recharge groundwater and temper the local climate by restoring the soil and vegetation's function as a thermal regulator through evapotranspiration (water evaporates through surface vegetation).
The bio-inspired solution for soil resilience
TenCate AquaVia's new solution for the local depollution of stormwater during infiltration is in line with a collective aspiration to develop urban planning and infrastructure for the benefit of people and the environment.
With our aquatextiles, we offer yet another tool at the service of territories, considering the restoration of stormwater quality and underground biodiversity as a necessity for the ecological transition.
"Stormwater management plays a key role in the successful development of a region. In this context, better management means eliminating the pollution generated by human activity to return clean water to the soil.
This is the "raison d'être" of TenCate AquaVia, an eco-company created in 2020 that designs and manufactures aquatextile solutions in France with a continuous innovation approach, depolluting stormwater as it infiltrates into the ground, in order to preserve water and soil quality and protect biodiversity."
