Today, 42,000 tonnes of hazardous waste are still stored on the site, much to the chagrin of opponents.
The demonstrators posed on the gates of the site “blue armbands” to show their “hope that the waste will be evacuated” quickly, told AFP Philippe Aullen, of the Destocamine collective, at the origin of the rally attended by local elected officials. and parliamentarians, including the deputy of Haut-Rhin Hubert Ott (LREM) and those of Bas-Rhin Sandra Regol (EELV) and Emmanuel Fernandes (LFI).
“Our leitmotif is the extraction of waste. And quickly: time is once morest us”, added Mr. Aullen, while the fate of waste is the subject of a legal tussle between opponents and l ‘State.
Last twist in the file-river: at the beginning of August, justice rejected a request from the operator of the site who wished to resume the work of final burial of the waste, suspended since May.
Suspended works
Since then, the landfill work has been suspended and no “new litigation” has been added, told AFP Céline Schumpp, the amicable liquidator of the Alsace Potash Mines (MDPA), which manages Stocamine. This recalls that a new hearing on the merits concerning this work must still be held before the administrative court of Strasbourg.
Located near the water table in Alsace, the largest in Europe, the former potash mine, whose galleries are gradually sinking, houses some 42,000 tonnes of hazardous industrial waste 550 m underground. (asbestos, arsenic…) but not radioactive, buried at the turn of the 2000s.
In 2002, an underground waste fire had put an end to the addition of new waste. Two months had been needed to turn it off, while the regulations normally prohibited storing any “flammable product” there.
convictions
The director of Stocamine and the company had been condemned a few years later for this fire, the director having been condemned to a fine of 5000 euros for “endangering others by manifestly deliberate violation of particular obligations of safety and prudence “.
Since then, the fate of the waste has been the subject of a bitter battle between the State, which wants to close the site and confine it with concrete plugs before the mine collapses completely, and the local authorities and defenders of the environment. environment, who want the removal of as much waste as possible.
“The country is dry today in water and we are only at the beginning of the consequences of climate change. So taking a risk for the water table, for me it is inconceivable”, had declared at the beginning of September the President of the European Community of Alsace, LR Frédéric Bierry, opponent of landfill.
