2023-11-26 13:03:54
When in May, Romane Bonnemé and Emmanuel Morimont received the results from the SWDE, they also learned that since March, it had placed activated carbon filters on the P1 well. “De facto, from this moment, we are below the standard of 100 ng/l. If in May, this standard had been exceeded, with the results available to us, it is clear that we would have had to consider warning the authorities. But it is not up to us to make this type of alert to the general public in any case. We are not a health agency.”
“Indeed”, specifies the Director of Information, Jean-Pierre Jacqmin. “The authorities we contacted were aware of our research work. For their part, they might have done the alert work, within the municipalities in particular. For our part, we had to take the time to check, and certainly when on the other hand, it takes so long to respond to us, or we are told that it is not so serious. If we had not been scrupulous, we would have been blamed for it.
Not in the face of serious and imminent danger
On the other hand, things would have been different if we had been made aware of a serious and imminent danger.”
And there, the Director of Information refers to the law of 2005, Minister Onkelinx’s law for the protection of journalists’ sources. “It is a law which is welcomed abroad, it guarantees the protection of sources, which is essential in a democracy but it also provides for exceptions. Namely if there is an imminent danger to people’s lives (typical example: being informed of the preparation of a terrorist act), in which case, it is necessary to warn the authorities.
In this case, as far as this investigation is concerned, we were not in this situation.”
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#RTBF #warned #general #public #earlier
