The Administrative Court of Appeal of Paris invalidated, Thursday, the local urban plan which allowed to destroy part of the allotments of Aubervilliers to establish a swimming pool of training for the Olympic Games of Paris 2024, invoking a ” damage” to biodiversity.
«It is enjoined to the president of the public territorial establishment Plaine commune to initiate the procedure of modification of the local plan of intermunicipal urbanism in that it classifies in urban zone part of the western fringe of the gardens of the Virtues», the name of these century-old gardens in Seine-Saint-Denis, decided the court in a judgment published on Thursday. The intercommunality, led by the mayor (PS) of Saint-Denis Mathieu Hanotin, has four months to propose a new version, she specified.
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The Paris Administrative Court of Appeal considers that “the urbanization of the western fringe of the gardens of Virtues“, for the swimming pool but also a future metro station, “will also affect the preservation of a core of primary biodiversity and will increase the existing ecological discontinuities”. In its judgment, this competent body in matters of litigation surrounding the Olympic projects recalled that the disputed document presented “inconsistencies» with its own obligations, in particular environmental ones.
“The building permit remains valid”
The future aquatic center has a solarium, which must be built on approximately 4000 m2 of food plots. “There is no immediate consequence on the question of the work, the building permit remains valid. It does not affect the project“, reacted Mathieu Hanotin to AFP, ensuring that Plaine commune would comply. Asked, the city of Aubervilliers declared that it did not want to react “at this stage». «We always said the project was illegitimate, now it’s illegal. For the first time justice gives us reason by telling them “you have no right to do what you did”“Reacted Ziad Maalouf, one of the gardeners behind the request.
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A legal battle has started around the project. The opponents, who consider it against the current of the ecological emergency, also attacked the building permit and occupied the premises for four months in 2021. Briefly suspended by court decision, the work was finally able to continue. This did not prevent activists on February 2 from clinging to a concrete mixer until the intervention of the police.
Worth 33 million euros, a third of which is financed by Solideo (the company responsible for delivering the works for the 2024 Olympics), the aquatic center must serve as a training pool for swimmers during the Olympics, before to be accessible to residents.