The Advocate General required, before the Court of Appeal of Agen, prison sentences for the President and Vice-President of the Chamber of Agriculture, in the issue of the illegal dam of Caussade. The judgment will be rendered on December 17.
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Tricolor scarves and yellow caps made headquarters on Thursday, October 28, the Agen courthouse. A hundred elected officials of all banks, including the Mayor of Agen, Jean Dionis of the Stay, and about a thousand agricultural union activists rural coordination, came into numbers on the occasion of the appeal judgment of the President of the Chamber Agriculture of Lot-et-Garonne, Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, and Vice President, Patrick Franken. They had been sentenced in first instance in July 2020, in the illegal dam record of Caussade, at nine months in prison, as well as 7,000 euros fine. Very rare penalties in an environmental file and for agricultural managers.
At the end of a long six-hour hearing, the Agen Court of Appeal Advocate required the same penalties, before the case be deliberate on December 17. None of the two missed did not want to comment but for Pascal Béteille, President of Rural Coordination 47, “Our mobilization is a success, the construction of the lake a victory, what we want is the relaxed”.
Long battle
Throughout the afternoon, the judges attempted, asking for a long time the defendants, to unfold the thread of this project that dates back to the 1980s. He really takes shape in 2015, when a union Farmers irrigating deposits an application for work authorization to erect a dam in the Tolzac Valley, in the municipality of Pinel-Hauterive. Following a positive public inquiry, the Department Prefecture published on 29 June 2018 an authorization order. But in early October 2018, a letter signed by agricultural ministers, Stéphane Travert, and the ecological transition, François de Rugy, indicates to the prefect that the project is not compatible with the planning and Water management and the European Framework Directive on Water.
On October 15, the prefecture therefore removes its authorization. This is the beginning of a long battle in the administrative court. “We are at six convictions and that led those leaders who consider themselves above the laws before the criminal justice,” Hammered Alice Terrace, the lawyer of France Nature Environnement (FNE) and SepoSo , a federation of environmental associations, which have consistently established civil parties. Because despite these convictions, as early as December 2018, the work begins, entirely financed by the Chamber of Agriculture for an amount of 1.2 million euros. A dike of 300 meters in length and 12 meters high today the valley where the tolzac small watercounted winds and retains the artificial lake of 920,000 m 2 which irrigates today Twenty farms where corn is cultivated, prunes, onions, beetroot or hazelnuts.
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