It is perhaps a condemnation that will mark a date. A fruit farmer in Doubs County was found guilty on Friday by the Besançon Criminal Court of “general water pollution”. She will have to pay a fine of 70,000 euros, including 40,000 euros suspended.
The Monnin cheese dairy, which makes Morbier and Comté, had dumped part of the waste from the manufacture of its products directly into the ground between April and March 2021. This seeped into the karst limestone subsoil before to emerge in the Bonnecreau stream, a tributary of the Loue.
Alert given by residents
“It’s an unprecedented audience, cheese dairies are very little controlled”, underlined Claire Keller, parquet specialist in charge of the regional pole of the environment. This conviction could set a precedent.
The alert had been given by local residents who had noticed the unusual presence of algae. An investigation had been opened, led by the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB).
other fines
The court also sentenced the cheese dairy to a fine of 7,000 euros for “violation of a prefectural decree” between August 2019 and February 2021. This decree authorized it to process 21,000 liters of milk per day, and quantified the liter it could legally dump into the river. But the investigation established that it had treated up to 33,500 liters in May 2020.
The manager and his son were also ordered to pay a fine of 5,000 euros each, including 3,000 euros suspended, for “general water pollution” and 1,000 euros for “violation of a prefectural decree”.
The Monnin cheese dairy, created in Chanttrans in 1994, near Ornans, employs about twenty employees and generates an annual profit of nearly 800,000 euros. It had been the subject of three formal notices from the Doubs prefecture to bring itself into compliance.
The Fishing Federation, which is alarmed by the pollution of the Doubs rivers, particularly famous for trout fishing, has filed a civil action for ecological damage.