Short abstract:

The paper proposes a methodology for investigating and assembling local environmental knowledge in order to produce alternate narratives to dominant imaginaries of water engineers, and to question ecological uncertainties according a heuristics of fear.

Long abstract:

Large infrastructures designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, like waterways, are promoted through progress narratives that cast those with concerns as opponents. Project designs produce an ontological framing, meaning a selection of what exists or is planned. The depicted forms constitute environmental motifs (Bouleau 2019) that shape the issues they pertain to. This argumentative and ontological framing works in favour of infrastructures and makes other distributive (Swyngedouw 2019) or ecological issues less prominent and asymmetries of resources hamper criticism. However, these imaginations do not completely exhaust representations of the future, particularly concerns regarding forms of biodiversity and their modes of governance in the future. My research aims to bring these concerns to light in order to gain perspective on the dominant imagination. I collected expressions of environmental concerns from voices less heard on the territory, such as from associative actors. I discussed their significance with an ecologist to identify relevant causations and assemble them based on the concept of "environmental motif" (Bouleau, 2019) into three alternative narratives aligned with different visions of the future of the ecological crisis (green growth, frugality, and ecological modernization). This stance operationalises the "heuristic of fear" (Jonas, 1990) with place-based linguistic and sensory repertoires of the environment.

Short abstract:

The water authority in Paris suburbs, SEDIF, has promoted reverse osmosis (RO) to eliminate micropollutants. Consequently, the National Commission for Public Debate organized public hearings on water quality, not RO. Water quality has become a local political topic despite the regulatory framework.

Long abstract:

European norms specify tap water quality. They are produced by the scientific knowledge of health and environment agencies and political negotiations between EU institutions. Heads of water public services are responsible for tap water quality. The water authority in Paris suburbs, SEDIF, has promoted reverse osmosis (RO) technology to create a “pure water, devoid of limestone and chlorine”. SEDIF argued that RO eliminates all micropollutants and limestone during the treatment process. It also argued that RO means avoiding injections of chlorine into the water network. A local water authority poised as the authority defining water quality : this reformulated the definition of drinking water quality. Given the large scale of this project, NGOs applied to the National Commission for Public Debate to organize a participatory debate on this project. The independent body chose to focus the debate, which occurred from April to July 2023, on water quality instead of RO. Water quality became a local and publicly debated issue (and not only an issue for experts): this was the second step in reformulating the definition of drinking water quality. In this process, the public debate became a hybrid forum where technological innovations were questioned by lay persons. The public debate embodied a socio-technical controversy: this was the third step of the reformulation process. Water quality and the ways to achieve it were thus politicized as bearing ideological orientations.

Short abstract:

We explore transitions in contemporary sewage management and visions of the circular reuse of biosolids. In light of the toxic contamination of wastewater we argue that engaging with sewage offers a vantage point for attending to the materiality of programmes of infrastructural transformation.

Long abstract:

Wastewater and sewage systems constitute a critical, if largely invisible, underbelly of contemporary water infrastructures. Emerging in the nineteenth century, through the consolidation of public health, the sanitary movement and environmental science and characterised by technologies of industrial ecosystems (Schneider 2011), sewage infrastructures have recently emerged as sites of renewed political concern. In this context, visions of the circular reuse and anticipated monetisation of sewage have been troubled by a recognition of the ways in which wastewater is commonly contaminated by a range of toxic substances (including PFAS, microplastics and heavy metals). In this paper we explore transitions in contemporary waste management practices in light of these dynamics, basing our analysis on empirical research into the potential reuse of the solid waste produced through sewage treatment – what is commonly referred to as sludge or biosolids. Working with co-productionist and relational accounts of socio-technical transitions, we argue that wastewater, and the potential reuse of biosolids, offers a key vantage point for attending to the materiality of programmes of infrastructural transition and how visions of socio-technical transformation co-produce a “range of meanings, knowings, doings, and modes of organising” (Longhurst & Chilvers 2019). We conclude that, far from a merely technical challenge, anticipated transitions in sewage treatment entail situated negotiations of the material mass and volume of solid waste, complex more-than-human and chemosocial relations, and dynamic and changing climatic conditions.

Short abstract:

Our proposal analyses the politicisation of water infrastructures in Ault, in particular dikes, water drainage and soft hydraulics aimed at preventing coastal erosion. While not projecting the same future or the same values, their articulation enacts the ambivalent way of inhabiting the coastline.

Long abstract:

Resisting? Coastal erosion has long affected life in the town of Ault, built on the alabaster cliffs of the Baie de Somme. Several streets have disappeared over the last two centuries. Erosion has been countered by defensive infrastructures (dikes, groins), contributing to a shared collective image of resistance to the sea. In 2013, the municipality's retreat strategy, questioning the maintenance of the defensive infrastructures and suggesting the relocation of 80 houses, led to a major mobilisation of the inhabitants.

Withdrawal? Today, the timing of the withdrawal is being post-poned without mentioning the sensitive issue of resettlement. The underground drainage system is being reconfigured to adapt to the projected fall of houses. This strategy does not generate conflict, while in the long term it facilitates the withdrawal.

Resisting and retreating? Far from replacing the desire to resist, this second strategy is combined with the desire to fight against the sea and the erosion caused by agricultural run-off. The politicisation of water infrastructure is thus achieved through a dual positioning of actors (residents and municipality), who consider different spatial and temporal scales (that of erosion and public action, and that of a human life). Local actors want to develop soft hydraulics on agricultural land in the hinterland to slow down run-off, but also maintain the so-called "83" dike, on the principle that other defensive structures are maintained in other areas of the coast. Through water infrastructures, two futures (Gandy, 2014) coexist in Ault: accepting erosion while trying to slow it down.

Short abstract:

The installation of water reservoirs in western France to allow agriculture to irrigate in summer without impacting on the environment raises many questions. Various scenarios for the future are developed, questioning our relationship with the anthropisation of the world.

Long abstract:

With the succession of heatwaves and growing difficulties in obtaining water in quantity and quality, water is at the centre of many tensions. Scientific forecasts are highly uncertain. Farmers are organising themselves around new water management infrastructures, while citizens are worried and make their concerns known.

In western France, government consultation has led to the creation of water replacement reservoirs (also called as "megabassines" by their critics) (Carrausse 2022). These infrastructures enable surplus water to be stored in the water tables in winter, to be used when agricultural irrigation needs are greatest in summer. However, the social and environmental impacts are widely decried by opponents, backed by numerous scientists (Azam et al., 2023). Since 2022, there has been an increase in the number and variety of events linked to these protests, including demonstrations, juridical actions and damages to infrastructure. Many scientists are taking sides in the debate but are also committed to producing new data, whether this concerns the capacity of soils to retain water, the groundwater hydrogeology, naturalistic knowledge or legal remedies.

From a STS (Science and Technology Studies) perspective, this paper aims to show how different narratives, including scientific narratives, participate in the fabrication of futures (Granjou, Walker, and Salazar 2017). I will show how farmers are placed at the heart of action in the face of the risks of climate change in the imaginaries associated with the implementation of these infrastructures and what alternative narratives are constructed.

Short abstract:

Grounded in ethnographic research among Los Angeles-based advocates for domestic wastewater recycling systems, this paper explores the waterscape imaginaries and technopolitical frictions at stake in these home-scale infrastructural transformations.

Long abstract:

In Los Angeles, domestic wastewater recycling (“greywater”) systems are controversial, loved by local environmentalists and disdained by the city’s water agencies. Drawing on fieldwork among greywater advocates and public water agency workers, this paper examines how greywater systems function as nodes that unsettle relations between residents and the public agencies that manage the city’s water grid. Elaborating the longstanding frictions over greywater reuse in LA reveals how these fixtures are mobilised by advocates to rescript the roles of both individuals and the state within the urban waterscape. Detailing public agency workers’ resistance to this form of selective disconnection from the grid helps to clarify the patterns of flows, norms of consumption, and forms of state control at stake in efforts to decentralise arrangements of urban water management.

Short abstract:

The paper focuses on riverfront and floodplain development in 3 cities in India: Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Varanasi. In the arena of urban planning futures are not only imagined but also engineered in the form of water infrastructure – hence imagineering - as the material component of political rule.

Long abstract:

This paper focuses on riverfront and floodplain development in three cities in India: Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Varanasi. The Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad (Gujarat State) has become a ‘model’ that other cities seek to follow as part of ‘smart city’ concepts or other urban development approaches. Notwithstanding many unfinished or halted riverfront development projects, the Indian government plans to undertake similar development in a large number of cities. Using a cultural political economy heuristic, to which we add a materiality focus, we investigate the cultural/performative dimension of water infrastructure, its institutional/political dimension, and its economic/investment dimension as different but related components of state rule. We argue that in the arena of urban planning, broadly understood, futures are not only imagined but also engineered in the form of riverfront and floodplain infrastructure – hence imagineering. Simultaneously, riverfronts and floodplains themselves are arenas where the combined cultural, political and economic dimensions of governance and development play out. While all three dimensions are present in all situations, in Ahmedabad infrastructure as investment for economic growth stands out, in Lucknow the contestation of political (party) identities is prominent, while Varanasi has embarked on 'river centric development for a spiritual economy'. The paper emphasises the performative dimension of water infrastructure in processes of (urban) governance and development, ranging from aspirations of modernity to cultural and political identity.

Short abstract:

This paper studies the challenges in socio-technical transition of the urban water supply regime of Ludhiana (India), using the 'multi-level actor network' frame by focusing on assemblages of practices that shape relationship between actors and (non-human) components of water systems.

Long abstract:

This paper studies the challenges in socio-technical transition of the urban water supply regime of Ludhiana, a northern city of India under the powerful narrative and rubric of water reforms. It particularly focuses on the adaptability of various actors to the two-fold transition the city of Ludhiana is undergoing: (i) from a groundwater-based system to a surface water (dam) based system for the city water supply, and (ii) from an intermittent water supply regime to a continuous (24x7) water supply regime, through a pilot experiment that would be subsequently upscaled. These (ongoing) transitions reconfigure the existing water supply regimes by transforming an irrigation canal into multipurpose canal delivering water for urban use on a continuous basis. Based on a framework of multi-level actor network (Fatimah et al, 2023), the paper examines how assemblage of practices (Antczak & Beaudry, 2019) shape the relationship between actors and the artefacts (i.e. components of water supply system), which facilitate or resist and disrupt this transition. In this, the materiality of the components of water system, both – the pre-existing (groundwater) and newly brought in (surface water) – play a crucial role in characterizing the relationship. The paper shows that adaptability to the new water regimes in Ludhiana is strongly dependent on reconfigurations of (new) actor networks at multiple levels, that either retain the pre-existing vested interests or replace them by newer, more powerful interests at the regime level.