As announced before the mobilization, the gathering was “peaceful, joyful and family-friendly”. On Saturday, several hundred people – a thousand according to the organizers, between 500 and 800 according to the gendarmes – demonstrated against the “grabbing” of water in front of the semiconductor production site of STMicroelectronics, in Crolles in Isère.
Gathered under the slogan “Water, not chips”, the demonstrators are contesting the factory extension project, announced last summer by the Franco-Italian company and carried out in partnership with the American GlobalFoundries, synonymous according to them with an excess of water consumption. The organizers drew a parallel with the Sainte-Soline project, estimating that the production of these industries “would empty the mega-basin in twenty-two days, planned for a year for farmers”.
“We say that there is no problem with water withdrawal, but what about the future? asks Sébastien Triqueneaux, researcher at a CNRS institute in Grenoble and member of the Scientists in Rebellion.
A flow that will increase by the end of 2023
The STMicroelectronics site and the municipality of Crolles in which it is located are supplied by the drinking water network of the Grenoble metropolitan area, but belong to the neighboring territory of the community of municipalities of Grésivaudan.
Until then, the metropolis of Grenoble, which directly manages its drinking water network, supplied 23,000 m3 per day, or 8.4 million m3/year. But under a purchase agreement signed in October 2021, this flow should rise to 29,000 m3/day by the end of 2023, “allowing to take into account the evolution of needs for the coming years, in particular those of industries of the territory”, underlines a deliberation of the community of communes of Grésivaudan.
In 2021, according to STMicroelectronics’ environmental statement, 4.23 million m3 had been withdrawn by the plant, with almost all of this volume then discharged into surrounding waterways. In 2019, this volume withdrawn was 3.46 million m3.