1,500 gendarmes are mobilized, while the demonstrators hope to reach the site to “fill” the water reserve capable of containing the equivalent of 260 Olympic swimming pools.
Le Monde
The Historical Dryness confirms them in their opposition: several thousand demonstrators are preparing, Saturday October 29, to try to thwart the ‘Prohibition of the prefecture of Deux-Sèvres and an imposing gendarmerie device to reach the site of a water reserve they count Good “Reboucher”.
“Holy Soline is 720,000 cubic meters of water on more than ten hectares, eighteen kilometers of pipes for farmers, not one of them gave up pesticides. We don’t want that Was done here, we do not want it to be done elsewhere, “said Melissa Gingreau, spokesperson for the collective” Bassines no thank you “, which brings together environmental associations, union organizations and anti-capitalist groups.
Thousands of demonstrators, mostly arriving on foot to circumvent traffic restrictions, were gathered on Saturday noon in a field loaned by a peasant, constelled with Barnums and a yellow marquee bearing the inscription “Corn for all , justice anywhere “.
The objective of the organizers? “Succeed in reaching the basin, to remove all the grids that protect the site, to rebut the start of the hole, to prevent the resumption of work”, according to a leaflet broadcast on site before the departure of the processions scheduled at 2 p.m.
The prefect of Deux-Sèvres Emmanuelle Dubée said on Saturday, fearing “a violent demonstration” and recalled that it was “prohibited”, due to the degradations and clashes having punctuated a previous rally in March. “We will not leave a claim, or groups of individuals, approach the site of the substitution reserve,” she added. About 1,500 gendarmes are mobilized and at least two helicopters crisscross the area.
the equivalent of 260 Olympic swimming pools to irrigate summer
“Today, it will be fine, the police will have no choice but to back down and we will dance in this crater,” says Julien Le Guet, another door -Proole of “Bassines no thank you”.
The substitution reserves are open -air craters, covered with a plastic tarpaulin and filled thanks to the pumping of the water from the superficial phreatic tablecloths in winter. They can store up to 650,000 m3 (or 260 Olympic swimming pools) of water to irrigate summer, when precipitation is rarer.
that of Sainte-Soline is the second of a sixteen project drawn up by a group of 400 farmers gathered in the Coop de l’Eau, to “lower the samples in summer by 70 %”, in this region still subject to irrigation restrictions after an extraordinary summer drought.
“We are on October 29, it’s dry everywhere, it’s absurd to monopolize all the water available for some corn growers”, denounced the Yannick Jadot MEP, present on site like others Elected officials, whose deputy Sandrine Rousseau.