2024-01-12 04:30:06
Oysters from the port of La Teste-de-Buch, in the Arcachon basin, in December 2020. PHILIPPE LOPEZ / AFP
How did norovirus, the gastroenteritis virus, end up in oysters from the Arcachon basin, a few days before the end-of-year holidays, leading the authorities to issue an order temporarily banning their marketing? The measure, effective since December 27, and which might be lifted January 19 “provided that the analyzes are favorable”has already led to the loss of more than 7 million euros in turnover among oyster farmers in the sector.
Read the explanations: Why oysters from the Arcachon basin are still prohibited for sale
Two Complaints were filed on December 29 by the Arcachon Basin Water Defense Association (Adeba) and its president, Thierry Lafon, once morest the Arcachon Basin Intercommunal Union (SIBA), which has managed the Arcachon Basin for sixty years. water purification in this Gironde territory. Two other environmental associations, the Society for the Study, Protection and Development of Nature in the South-West (Sepanso) Gironde and the Arcachon Basin Environmental Coordination (CEBA), as well as individual oyster farmers, are also studying the possibility of filing a complaint.
At the origin of this contamination of the oysters: a bad situation between an epidemic of gastroenteritis and a heavy and continuous rainy episode for several days. Between October 26 and December 13, 70 centimeters of water fell in Gironde, the equivalent of the annual precipitation. The retention basins, supposed to retain this rainwater, would not have been enough to prevent runoff.
“An open sewer”
The wastewater collectors around the basin also proved insufficient to absorb all this water. “It was an open sewer, flowing for days and days, even weeks. This would be one of the causes, there are undoubtedly others all around the basin, and there we must investigate. Hence the purpose of the complaint, and of the investigation, which will allow us to know precisely what happened. explains Joël Mellet, from Sepanso Gironde.
The plaintiffs blame the rampant urbanization of the Arcachon basin. They believe that SIBA is torn between two of its responsibilities: collecting and cleaning wastewater, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, promoting tourism in the region. Created in 1964 with the ambition of protecting the body of water and its oyster farmers, SIBA is managed by elected officials from the municipalities of the Arcachon basin.
“SIBA is faced with a certain schizophrenia, deplores Thierry Lafon. There is its original DNA, and the fact that it is in the hands of people who only see through development. We are in a logic of concreting, ignoring the fundamental things to protect this territory, and in particular this question of rainwater, and ignoring the fact that we have a soil saturated with water. » The president of SIBA, the mayor of Arcachon, Yves Foulon (Les Républicains), and its general director, Sabine Jeandenand, did not respond to requests from Monde.
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