The Strasbourg Administrative Tribunal acted Thursday the cessation of the work decided by the State on the Stocamine storage site, in Wittelsheim, in the Haut-Rhin.
By Stéphane Mandard
The setbacks are linked for the government in the endless politico-judicial STOCAMINE series. In a decision rendered Thursday, January 12, the Strasbourg administrative court initiated the cessation of the confinement work of hazardous waste buried on the Stocamine storage site, in Wittelsheim, in the Haut-Rhin. The file has opposed the State for twenty years, favorable to final storage, and local authorities and environmental associations, which require the withdrawal of the most toxic products.
This judgment on the merits confirms the decision rendered in May in summary proceedings: “The work is suspended.” The immense preparation project for the closure of the site, acted by the government in January 2021, after years of procrastination, is stopped.
Nicknamed “the toxic trash of Alsace”, Stocamine, it is 42,000 tonnes of very toxic waste (arsenic, asbestos, chrome, incineration residues …) buried at 550 meters underground, in galleries dug at right of an old potash mine. They threaten, in the long term, the water table in Alsace, the largest in Europe, which supplies with drinking water some seven million inhabitants on both sides of the Rhine. The fire, in 2002, of Bloc 15, led to stopping new waste on the site and the start of the soap.
At the request of the government, the prefect of Haut-Rhin had made a new decree on January 28, 2022 (after that of 2017 canceled in October 2021 by the Nancy Court of Appeal) authorizing, as a precaution, the realization of work necessary for the confinement of waste, including the construction of six watertight barriers around the galleries and the backfilling of the famous block 15. At the same time, it put in notice the operator of the site, Mines de Potasse d’Alsace (MDPA), including the ‘State is a shareholder, to file a new authorization request file for unlimited waste storage. This decree had been attacked by the European community of Alsace (CEA, grouping of the Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin departments) and the Nature Environment association.
In its judgment, the administrative court cancels the decree, believing that “the prefect could not, as a precaution, authorize containment work (…) without waiting for the term of the request for authorization storage for an unlimited period “, believing that this work has a” final character “. The administrative judge adds that “the prefect does not justify a reason of general interest to carry out such operations in an emergency”. He concludes that “the need to proceed with the irreversible backfilling of block 15 is not justified”.
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