Water in France Water is important in our landscapes: we have 3805 km of coast and six main rivers.

Every year France records around 400 billion m3 of rainwater, 2/3 of which evaporates: the remaining 175 billion m3 supply surface and underground water.

About 32 billion m3 of freshwater per year is extracted in France:

Industry : 22 billion m3/year

Agriculture : 4 billion m3/year

Drinking water : approximately 6 billion m3/year

Our river : La Bresle

Our school is built near a river called La Bresle. This river is the border between Picardie and Normandie. Last year, after Clean Up Day, our children wrote a letter to the group of persons in charge of cleaning this river because they had seen some rubbish in it. This year they were very happy to see that the river was very clean with many fishes inside.

Water: what have we done in our school? We tried to clean some muddy water: we have done many experiments and have been successful with decantation and filtration. We then asked ourselves if clear water was always clean. We tried to mix some powders with water.

Salt and sugar disappeared. We then wondered how to recover salt from water. We waited until evaporation.

We then used a model to study how salty water evaporated from seas.

At the end of the day, we had raindrops falling into the lake. Water was not salty. We created some posters about this cycle. We learnt how to save water through some games.