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DÉCRYPTAGE - La baisse inédite de la consommation en 2023 met à mal le financement des services qui gèrent cette ressource.

Les chiffres sont inédits : en 2023, la consommation d’eau a baissé en France de 3 % à 4 % en moyenne, soit bien plus que le recul de 0,5 % à 1 % de ces dernières années. Elle a même pu atteindre 10 % dans certains territoires. C’est le résultat des efforts de sobriété croissants des particuliers et des entreprises face aux sécheresses répétées. L’eau est désormais perçue comme une ressource de plus en plus rare. Cette décroissance de la consommation, qui est une bonne nouvelle pour l’environnement, pèse toutefois lourdement sur le financement des services d’eau et d’assainissement « à bout de souffle », alertent, à l’unisson, les collectivités locales qui gèrent sous différentes formes cette ressource (régie, gestion mixte, délégation de service public…) et les entreprises de l’eau, Suez et Veolia.

Et pour cause. Les recettes des acteurs du secteur reposent, en grande partie, sur les volumes consommés. Parallèlement, ils font face à des investissements colossaux ces prochaines années. Dans ce cadre, « l’augmentation du prix de l’eau est inéluctable », a averti Hervé Paul, vice-président de la Fédération nationale des collectivités concédantes et régies (FNCCR), lors d’une conférence de presse commune avec Intercommunalités de France et la Fédération française des entreprises privées de l’eau (FP2E).

Le sujet n’est pas nouveau. Mais il est politiquement très sensible pour les élus locaux, qui ont la main sur la tarification de l’eau facturée aux citoyens. À l’heure où le pouvoir d’achat des ménages reste tendu, des hausses mêmes minimes risquent d’être impopulaires. Pourtant, la consommation d’eau pèse peu dans le budget des ménages. « En France, le prix de l’eau est relativement faible. Il s’élève en moyenne à 4,30 euros par mètre cube, soit 0,8 % du budget des ménages, à comparer à l’énergie pour le chauffage (4,7 %) ou la téléphonie (2 %) », constatent les collectivités et les entreprises du secteur, bien décidées à préparer les esprits à des hausses.

« Aucun service ne peut investir si le prix de l’eau est dérisoire », insiste Hervé Paul de la FNCCR. Car, alors, l’excédent financier dégagé par l’activité courante est trop faible pour pouvoir fournir un véritable effort d’investissement. En 2023, les factures d’eau ont rapporté 13 milliards d’euros de recettes. Avec cette somme, il s’agit de supporter les coûts d’alimentation en eau potable et d’assainissement des eaux usées, mais aussi de payer les redevances (1,9 milliard) et les taxes (1,1 milliard). L’équation est d’autant plus difficile que les recettes perçues dépendent à 80 % des volumes consommés par les particuliers et entreprises. La part fixe de la facturation aux ménages - à savoir, l’abonnement- ne représentant que 20 % de ces rentrées financières.

Or la tendance à la baisse de la consommation d’eau observée l’an dernier, tant chez les particuliers que chez les industriels, devrait se poursuivre cette année. « Sur les quatre premiers mois de 2024, dans ma collectivité, je suis à 3 % de moins », indique Régis Banquet, vice-président d’Intercommunalités de France et élu de l’agglomération de Carcassonne.

En outre, pour les prochaines années, les professionnels font face à « un mur d’investissements » dont les montants se chiffrent à 30 milliards d’euros. Outre les projets de renouvellement des réseaux, ces financements sont nécessaires pour se conformer aux obligations réglementaires, notamment en matière de réduction de la pollution. La France ne fait d’ailleurs pas partie des bons élèves européens en la matière : elle a été sanctionnée par la Commission européenne en 2023 pour ne pas avoir respecté pleinement la directive relative à la qualité des eaux potables.

Ces investissements devraient générer une hausse des coûts de 30 % à 50 % dans les cinq à dix années à venir, précisent les acteurs du secteur. Difficile de ne pas en répercuter une partie sur les tarifications. « Au cours des prochaines années, la place de l’eau dans le budget des ménages devrait passer de 0,8 % à 1 %, voire 1,2 % », évalue Régis Banquet. Mais l’élu, qui marche sur des œufs, veut aussi croire que cette hausse sera compensée par la baisse de la consommation.

Les forages privés dans le collimateur

Cette hausse générale du prix de l’eau n’est pas la seule réponse apportée par les collectivités et les entreprises pour tenter d’améliorer le modèle de financement des services de l’eau. Les acteurs du secteur mettent en avant d’autres pistes. Comme les tarifications saisonnières, encore trop peu utilisées : les prix sont plus élevés en période de forte tension sur l’eau, génératrice des surcoûts, en particulier durant l’été. À Toulouse, une hausse des tarifs de 42 % sera désormais appliquée entre juin et octobre. En contrepartie, les tarifs seront abaissés de 30 % sur les sept autres mois de l’année pour éviter de pénaliser les ménages. Autre mesure qui risque de faire grincer des dents : la suppression des tarifs dégressifs appliqués aux gros consommateurs d’eau, comme les industriels. Ces tarifs « contreviennent à l’objectif de sobriété tout en déséquilibrant le financement des services », expliquent la FNCCR et les entreprises de l’eau. Des forfaits pourraient ainsi remplacer ces tarifs dégressifs.

Les forages privés sont également dans le collimateur. Ce sont ces puits d’eau domestiques que certains particuliers utilisent mais qui ne sont que très rarement déclarées. « Ce sont des passagers clandestins des assainissements collectifs », dénonce-t-on du côté de la FNCCR, appelant à serrer la vis.

Four months ago, I wrote about losing 40 pounds on Mounjaro and wondered how I would do without the drug. It’s been an odyssey of binges, diets and exercise, but I’ve kept the weight off.

My food cravings came back at first with a whimper, then with a bang. I noticed them about three weeks after I took my last dose of a blockbuster medicine that helped me lose 40 pounds with shocking ease.

During the five months that I took Mounjaro, I had experienced what felt like freedom. My usual internal Greek chorus of a thousand voices, always telling me to eat, had been silent. French fries, doughnuts and Frosted Flakes no longer called to me. Then, I stopped taking the drug, a common choice for those using medicines like Mounjaro or Ozempic to lose weight. Cost was a primary factor; I was paying $1,000 a month myself because most insurance generally covers the drugs only for their primary use, combating diabetes. And despite the weight loss, I felt ambivalent about the idea of relying on the pharmaceutical help for life, as the drug makers recommend.

Then came the challenges of the next four months: a roulette wheel of binges, diets, exercise regimens and mental and emotional battles with myself over will power, self-image and motivation. It was remarkably like the struggles of overeating without taking a wonder drug first, though with one important difference: That wonder drug had given me the gift of a 40-pound head start, to either seize upon or squander.

In my case, there was a surprise revelation to process as well. After I published an essay in The Wall Street Journal in January about my weight-loss experience, my mother disclosed to me that she had been taking Ozempic, then Mounjaro, herself for more than a year. She lost just about as much weight as I did, but as the milestone of her 80th birthday approached, she sought to lose more—“I wanted to feel well,” she told me—so she opted to raise her dose, despite the daily bouts of nausea and gastric discomfort that followed.

She recounted for me her own experience with a lifetime of battling obesity, starting from her senior year in high school when she lost 15 pounds for graduation photos. Over the decades, she turned to one crash diet after another and seesawed in weight more than a dozen times. In her later years, she has endured almost constant pain from a variety of conditions, all made worse by her weight. Lately, she has also been racked with guilt over feelings of having passed such issues and struggles along to me, whether by nature or nurture. “I should have protected you from that,” she said.

As we talked, we bonded over the difficult duality of being overweight or obese: Often, you wish that you didn’t care and pledge that you can love yourself as you are. But then you start to wonder: Could I change?

Something like that has motivated the millions taking Mounjaro, Ozempic and similar drugs purely for weight loss. As the drugs’ popularity has surged, a number of clinical studies have shown that those who stop taking them can regain the lost pounds at a rapid clip. That has led drug manufacturers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to recommend that patients stay on the medicines, perhaps for life. But most people are quitting: A recent analysis of thousands of insurance claims found that only a third of individuals who started such drugs for weight-loss were still taking them after a year.

Some people do get sustained benefits. In a study by Epic Research, more than half of participants either maintained their weight, or had lost more, a year after stopping the medicines; one in five had even doubled their weight loss. I was determined to be one of the success stories and to figure out what to do to keep the drug’s effects from fading.

When I stopped the Mounjaro, tortilla chips and salsa were the first “bad” food I wanted again. I only ate a handful at first, a minor dalliance. But within a few weeks, the dam started to break. After eating a normal-size salad for lunch while at work, I started feeling hungry about an hour later. I avoided snacking, but the cravings only grew. By dinner, I felt famished and ate to excess as soon as I got home: Not one but two plates of spaghetti, which I chased down with another round of chips and salsa. It was a familiar, and crushing, pattern. Within two months I gained back 5 pounds and wondered: Is this, already, when the music dies?

There was one clear bright spot: I had been liberated from an addiction to sugar, a miracle that has brought tremendous joy and relief. Since ending my course of Mounjaro, I still can’t finish a doughnut. And because I no longer want sugar on everything I eat (I used to put it on strawberries—or even already sugar-laced breakfast cereal), a lot of naturally sweet food is wonderful again. (Even so, I also adopted a sugar substitute, allulose, which helped reduce nighttime hunger pangs—it occurs naturally in foods such as figs and has about 70% of the sweetness of regular sugar.)

With my sweet tooth defanged, I started to research what I could do to feel more full—-to essentially replicate the effect of the medicine. Thus began what felt like an obsession with high-protein foods. In some scientific studies, diets higher in protein have been shown to help eaters feel full. They also complement weightlifting or resistance training, which research has shown can help reduce the risk of regaining weight after a period of dramatic weight-loss. After consulting with a friend and personal trainer, I set a high target of 150 grams of protein a day, above normal U.S. government recommendations but in a range aimed at people on resistance training trying to retain muscle mass.

At first, it worked. The more protein I had, the less hungry I felt. It offered a respite from the voices. I ramped up my exercise to about 12 hours a week, half of it in the weight room, and started eating meat and cheese like a heavyweight champ. Steak and eggs in the morning, buffalo chicken and rice for lunch and brisket for dinner. I replaced chips and salsa with jicama and high-protein cottage cheese. It felt like I had beef jerky and peanuts or cashews all day long, and when I wasn’t eating those I was dousing one thing after another in protein powder.

Eventually, I got meat fatigue: It got harder and harder to eat that second or third helping of dried, barbecue-flavored Korean pork. I started looking to fiber, which also helps increase satiety. Avocados, blueberries and certain other fruits and vegetables were a much-needed respite from protein, and ultimately I reduced my protein goal by half and instead tried to keep the calories lower—a little under 1,800 a day.

So far, the hard work has been successful. I lost back the 5 pounds, and I’m still at roughly my post-Mounjaro weight. Recently, I began training to summit Mount Whitney, California’s tallest peak, which will require even more exercise and may lead to even more weight loss, if the past is a benchmark.

Even so, I’m staying cautious. I didn’t get rid of my too-big clothes until just last week—a ritual that always fills serial dieters like me with a peculiar combination of excitement and dread. The dread comes from the question: How long will it be before any new and lovely clothes I buy won’t fit anymore? Still, since I was at the lowest weight I had seen in years, I decided to try out a new look. I emulated former Apple designer Jony Ive by shaving my head and trimming my beard down to stubble and by adopting fitted T-shirts. My kids were unimpressed. I had to admit they weren’t wrong. For years, I had imagined that a new style and wardrobe would complete my Pygmalion story. But there I was being teased mercilessly by my 13-year-old son. I’m letting the hair grow back now.

Overall, I found myself feeling more conflicted about my gaunter self. Having pined to be thin for so long, once it became somewhat routine, I was surprised to be a little underwhelmed.

My feeling reminded me of a great scene from “Lonesome Dove,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Larry McMurtry. I remember Gus, an old Texas ranger played by Robert Duvall in the TV miniseries, comforting a paramour who can’t let go of her dream of being a “fancy lady” in San Francisco. “Life in San Francisco is still just life,” Gus says in the book. “If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment.” He urges her, instead, “to learn to like all the everyday things,” like a soft bed or a glass of buttermilk.

Life as a thin person trying to stay that way, it turns out, is like that—still just life. The same struggles, the same need to enjoy the little things to compensate. The Pygmalion story goes on.

Things look strong on paper, but many Americans remain unconvinced. We asked economic officials, the woman who coined “vibecession” and Charlamagne Tha God what they think is happening.

The U.S. economy has been an enigma over the past few years. The job market is booming, and consumers are still spending, which is usually a sign of optimism. But if you ask Americans, many will tell you that they feel bad about the economy and are unhappy about President Biden’s economic record.

Call it the vibecession. Call it a mystery. Blame TikTok, media headlines or the long shadow of the pandemic. The gloom prevails. The University of Michigan consumer confidence index, which looked a little bit sunnier this year after a substantial slowdown in inflation over 2023, has again soured. And while a measure of sentiment produced by the Conference Board improved in May, the survey showed that expectations remained shaky.

The negativity could end up mattering in the 2024 presidential election. More than half of registered voters in six battleground states rated the economy as “poor” in a recent poll by The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College. And 14 percent said the political and economic system needed to be torn down entirely.

What’s going on here? We asked government officials and prominent analysts from the Federal Reserve, the White House, academia and the internet commentariat about what they think is happening. Here’s a summary of what they said.

KYLA SCANLON, COINER OF THE TERM ‘VIBECESSION’

Price levels matter, and people are also getting some facts wrong.

The most common explanation for why people feel bad about the economy — one that every person interviewed for this article brought up — is simple. Prices jumped a lot when inflation was really rapid in 2021 and 2022. Now they aren’t climbing as quickly, but people are left contending with the reality that rent, cheeseburgers, running shoes and day care all cost more.

“Inflation is a pressure cooker,” said Kyla Scanlon, who this week is releasing a book titled “In This Economy?” that explains common economic concepts. “It hurts over time. You had a couple of years of pretty high inflation, and people are really dealing with the aftermath of that.”

But Ms. Scanlon also pointed out that knowledge gaps could be part of the problem: A Harris poll for The Guardian this month found that a majority of Americans (incorrectly) believed that the United States was in a recession. About half said they believed the stock market was down from last year, though it is up considerably.

“Yes, there is economic frustration, but these are objectively verifiable facts,” she said.

RAPHAEL BOSTIC, PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ATLANTA

Part of this is about memory.

A big question is why — when the economy is growing, unemployment is historically low and stock prices are climbing — things feel so dim.

“When I talk to folks, they all tell me that they want interest rates to be lower, and they also tell me that prices are too high,” Raphael Bostic told reporters last week. “People remember where prices used to be, and they remember that they didn’t have to talk about inflation, and that was a very comfortable place.”

Mr. Bostic and his colleagues at the Fed have raised interest rates to a more-than-two-decade high in an effort to bring down the rapid price increases, and he said the key was wrestling inflation back to normal quickly.

JARED BERNSTEIN, CHAIRMAN OF THE WHITE HOUSE COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS

Catching up with inflation takes time.

As inflation cools, there is some hope that the negativity could fade. Jared Bernstein noted that for the past 14 months, middle-class wage growth has been beating inflation, and predicted that people would feel better as wages caught up to higher price levels.

“If that were wrong, everyone would be walking around eternally upset that gas doesn’t cost $1 a gallon,” Mr. Bernstein said. “The two components of that adjustment are time plus rising real pay.”

LORETTA MESTER, PRESIDENT OF THE CLEVELAND FED

Wages have lagged.

But not everyone has broken even at this point, and that could be part of the explanation behind the continued pessimism. On average, pay gains have not fully caught up with the jump in prices since the start of the pandemic, if you compare Consumer Price Index increases with a wages and salary measure that Fed officials watch closely.

“They still haven’t made up for all of the lost ground,” Loretta Mester said. “They’re still in a hole, a little bit.”

Ms. Mester noted that people were also struggling to afford houses, because prices have shot up in many places and high interest rates are making first-time homeownership difficult, putting that part of the American dream out of reach for many.

LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS, HARVARD ECONOMIST AND COMMENTATOR

Interest rates are part of the issue.

That touches on an issue that Lawrence H. Summers recently raised in an economic paper: For most people, the higher interest rates that the Fed is using to try to slow demand and squash price increases feel like just another form of inflation. In fact, if high interest rates are added into inflation, that explains most of the gap between where consumer confidence is and where one might expect it to be.

“The experienced cost of living is much greater than inflation as reflected by the Consumer Price Index,” Mr. Summers said in an interview. He noted that consumer confidence improved when market-based rates, which feed into mortgage and leasing costs, eased early this year, then sank again as they rose.

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD, RADIO HOST

People remember more comfortable times.

Whatever is causing the unhappiness, it seems to be translating into negativity toward Mr. Biden. In the recent Times poll, many said they thought the economic and political system needed to be changed, and fewer said they thought that Mr. Biden, as opposed to former President Donald J. Trump, would usher in big alterations.

Charlamagne Tha God recently suggested on “The Interview,” a Times podcast, that Black voters in particular might be turning from Mr. Biden and toward Mr. Trump because they associated the former president with the last time they felt financially secure. Mr. Trump’s administration sent out two rounds of stimulus relief checks, which Mr. Trump signed. Mr. Biden sent out one, which he did not. And inflation began to pop in 2021, after Mr. Trump left office.

“People are living paycheck to paycheck,” Charlamagne said during a follow-up interview specifically about the economy. “You don’t know struggle until you’ve had to decide whether you’re going to pay for your car or pay for your rent.”

To his point, rents are up drastically since before the pandemic, and auto loan delinquencies are rising sharply. While inflation and higher interest rates have been a global phenomenon, people tend to blame the current economic challenges on whoever is in office.

“People can’t see past their bills,” Charlamagne said. “All we want is upward mobility and security, and whoever can provide that, even for a fleeting moment, you never forget it.”

SUSAN COLLINS, PRESIDENT OF THE BOSTON FED

People are anxious postpandemic.

In fact, the recent economy has offered something of a split screen: Some people are doing really well, watching their retirement portfolios improve and their home prices appreciate. But those people were often already well off. Meanwhile, people carrying credit card balances are facing much higher rates, and many Americans have exhausted whatever savings they managed to amass during the pandemic.

“There are groups that are doing really, really, well, and there also are groups that are struggling,” Susan Collins said. “We talk to individuals who are having a lot of trouble making ends meet.”

But she also noted that the period since the pandemic had been wrought with uncertainty. Changes to interest rate policies, years of inflation, and headlines about war and geopolitical upheaval may have shaken how people view their economic situations.

“I think that there is a different level of anxiety postpandemic that is hard to rule out,” Ms. Collins said.

AARON SOJOURNER, THE W.E. UPJOHN INSTITUTE

Some of this may be about media negativity.

Still, there’s one enduring mystery about the vibecession. People tend to be more optimistic about their personal economic situations than they are about the economy as a whole.

That could be because Americans rely on the media for their perception of national economic conditions, and news sentiment has grown more downbeat in recent years, said Aaron Sojourner, who recently wrote a study suggesting that economic news coverage has become more negative since 2018, and much more negative since 2021.

“For the last six years, the tone of economic news has been considerably more sour and negative than would be predicted based on macroeconomic variables,” he said.

But he acknowledged that journalists factored in real experiences and consumer sentiment data into their reporting, so it is difficult to know to what degree bad vibes are driving negative news and how much negative news is driving bad vibes.

“Does the sentiment cause the news, or does the news tone cause the sentiment? I don’t know,” Mr. Sojourner said.