Opponents of megabassines of Holy Soline launch a “ultimatum” to government

The collectives mobilized against the water reserve project in Deux-Sèvres claim the cessation of work and a moratorium on the storage of water for agricultural use in France.

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No mechanical shovels in the crater already formed, but gendarmes posted all around, on embankments, behind reversed fences, traces still visible from the passage of the demonstrators, Saturday October 29. The construction site for the water reserve with a capacity of 628,000 cubic meters for agricultural irrigation in Sainte-Soline, in Deux-Sèvres, did not resume, four days after the mobilization which turned to the confrontation.

However, the site remains under close surveillance, both by the police and the opponents, who built, a few hundred meters away, in the open field, a watchtower surrounded by palisades Wood covered with tags, some of which are hostile to the ecologist MEP Yannick Jadot, whose car was vandalized on Saturday. A precarious construction, which evokes a Gallic village. But no ZAD (zone to defend), so much feared by the prefect of Deux-Sèvres, Emmanuelle Dubée, still occupies the premises.

Representatives of the Collective Bassines Non thank you, land uprifies and the “150 components” which support the movement returned around the site, Wednesday, November 2, to fix a “ultimatum” to the State: the Immediate judgment of the work in Sainte-Soline, the suspension of the project to create sixteen reserves on the Sèvre Niortaise and Mignon basins (Deux-Sèvres, Charente-Maritime and Vienne) and “the taking of a national moratorium on the Water storage [for agricultural use] in France “.

” Change practices “

a Holy Soline (Deux-Sèvres), Wednesday, November 2, 2022. Pascal Lachenaud/AFP > “You realize that the revolution that is proposed is to feed grassy with grass,” said the European Ecologist and farmer in Charente-Maritime, Benoît Biteau, opposing the project of the project Coop de l’Eau 79, which promotes the construction of the sixteen reserves. Benoît Jaunet, breeder in Deux-Sèvres and spokesperson for the Confédération Paysanne 79, does not understand “that we put so much public money, so many police too, to defend a project that only concerns 5 % of the farmers of Deux -Sèvres ” – figures discussed by the Coop de l’Eau 79. And the breeder to claim the help of the Minister of Agriculture to” change the practices “.

“In Poitou-Charentes, we have 200 basins in the boxes, which represent 400 million euros of public money”, annoys Benoît Biteau, for whom this sum could accompany an “agroecological bifurcation, which would serve the all farmers “. The European deputy recalls that the water reserve projects are currently the subject of three appeals, two at the Administrative Court of Poitiers, one at the Bordeaux Court of Appeal.

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