An integrated amendment to the bill of finance 2022 authorizes the storage of hazardous waste in the old Alsatian potash mines “for an unlimited duration”.
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The dice seems, now thrown into the stormine folder. To secure its choice to authorize the confinement of 42,000 tonnes of chromium, cyanide, arsenic, asbestos and other toxic waste buried in Wittelsheim (Haut-Rhin), in the Stocamine Galleries, the Government has not waited for the decision of the decision. Council of State, which he seized after a judgment of the Nancy Administrative Court canceling the prefectural decree allowing landfill.
He discreetly registered in the bill of finance 2022 a state guarantee of 360 million euros granted to the Alsace potash mines company, accompanied by a waste storage authorization “for a Unlimited duration “. An amendment that Alsatian senators would have liked to refuse. By rejecting the first part of the finance bill, Tuesday, November 23, the senatorial majority deprives them, however, of any lever of action.
The amendment, presented Wednesday, November 10 by the Government in the National Assembly Finance Committee, adopted two days later in plenary session without any discussion, and confirmed on 16 November when the bill is adopted. at first reading finance, responds directly to the decision of the Nancy Administrative Court of Appeal. It considered, in fact, that the Alsace potash mines company, in liquidation since 2009, had neither the technical capacity nor financial means to carry out the containment of waste.
“Insignificant risks”
On the trip to Strasbourg Tuesday, November 23, as part of the preparation of the next French Presidency of the European Union, the Minister of the Ecological Transition did not hide his desire to advance the confinement procedures of waste . “The more we are waiting, the more dangerous for people who will go to the bottom to manage all the containment works,” said Barbara Pompili at AFP. “It is necessary to make a confinement that is adapted: if everything happens as expected, the risks of infringement at the water table are almost insignificant,” she defended.
A government approach that the President of the European Community of Alsace, Frédéric Bierry, judges unconstitutional, because contrary to the Charter of the Environment. “The infringement of the rights and needs of future generations appears to be obvious when the State grants a financial guarantee to allow (…) a containment of toxic waste that pursues a real risk over future generations and on the largest water table. of Europe “, he denounces.
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