My Mum told me yesterday she is exempted from her UK region’s hosepipe bans, due to her being a Blue Badge (disabled) holder who can’t physically carry watering cans to water her plants. She had to register as a Priority Plus (?) customer. I asked her what she uses her hosepipe for, and she says only for limited watering of some of her plants in pots. I must admit I thought she had possibly misunderstood, but having checked the water company’s website, it seems she’s right.
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Rest assured, no one will prosecute for your watering one little bush. Especially if you do it at dusk when no one can see 
What the regime rules are cincerning is larger amounts of watering. I doubt your single residence plus dog use anything much from the water supply, certainly not enough to trigger an alert.
if things get radically worse and you lose supply of water, hopefully there will be bottles delivered. Fran’s bush can enjoy a little eau minéralisé 
We’ve been in alerte renforcée for about 4 weeks now and it seems inevitable we’ll be in crise soon. Haven’t had any rain since mid May and a lot of our plants are now dead, even some of the drought tolerant ones we’ve bought in the last few years. We’ve scaled back our potager a lot and save every scrap of water we can to keep alive what we can. One thing that’s killing plants which I’ve ever seen before is the constant intense sunshine that’s scorching the leaves regardless of how much water you give them. Our three redcurrants and a blackcurrant have already gone this way.
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Same here, loads of dried out corpses in my courtyard, horrible, and my trees aren’t happy.
Same here. The older trees and bushes are holding on and we’re trying to keep three year old apple and pear alive with grey water from the house. The rest is mainly devastation.
In Lot et Garonne we are still allowed to water before 8am and after 8pm. Normally I only ever water the pots round the cottage and the pool for our guests. I foolishly decided to start a new bank of mainly bushes early in the summer and am struggling to keep them going. No potager this year.
The house we owned before we came to France came with a large fruit cage - covered with netting to keep out the birds. Maybe these days such cages need to have a light fabric over them to reduce the intensity of light? A bit like white washing the windows of greenhouses in summer.
@hairbear would you happen to know how localised the water restrictions are please? I’m wondering if Narbonne is the same as you. I know we can’t wash our cars at home or water the garden between 8h and 20h, I’m not sure about the rest.
As an aside, next door are in their holiday home and were happily hosing down the first floor terrasse and garde-corps when OH arrived back from the car wash just now. He mentioned that we have drought restrictions and the reply was ‘well your car wasn’t there (the water was falling onto our driveway) and it (the drought) doesn’t matter anyway’. Relations have never been good so I’m not sure there’s much we can do or say without causing further problems.
I’d rat on them to the mairie.
It doesn’t sound as though the relationship is redeemable so might as well do some good for the planet
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Here’s the arrêté for Aude that we were given. There may be a more up to date one with changes for other areas in Aude.
Arrêté préfectoral sécheresse-1783069853.pdf (4.3 MB)
The map in the document suggests you’re only on vigilance, but do check the website in case it’s changed.
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All the car washes around here have been closed for weeks, car is in a right mucky state.
Here’s the latest for Aude.
Narbonne area is now in Alerte, so your not allowed to water your plants with potable water. You’re also not allowed to wash your car or anything else outside. You can water your potager.
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OH thinks the car washes that are still open are the ones that recycle the water. I don’t really know how that works.
Filtration, personally I would force all operators to have that facility.
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Obviously a lot of mucky ones round here then. 
If they can recycle more than 70% of the water used, they’re allowed to continue … until it gets worse.
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I expect I’m oversimplifying this but when is most of Europe going to look at desalination plants? I believe Spain has started building some.
Or capturing rainwater that currently just runs off into rivers or the sea.
I don’t see the water supply problems getting any better.
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At present, this technology is more energy-intensive and polluting, as the brine discharged into the sea disrupts the local aquatic environment.
The most urgent priority in France would be to repair leaks in the distribution network; it is estimated that 20 per cent of the water is lost!
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A similar problem to the UK then? It doesn’t seem to be easily solvable.
We have huge amounts of water up here in the Montagne Noire, lots of big reservoirs but were in drought conditions. Unfortunately, most of our water goes to feed the Canal du Midi and we don’t get any of it.
We’re now in Crise as of today 
As is most of the western 60% of Aude.