In the south of France, the port of Marseille will unseal a vast concrete slab from an industrial zone to restore the “unique in the world” ecosystem of the Coussouls de la Crau, the only dry steppe in Europe. Renowned for its birds, such as the ganga cata, or its so-called “de la Crau” locust, this arid plain in southern Provence has seen “a significant part of its surface area lost following intensive industrial, military and agricultural development. », Recalled the port of Marseille in a press release.
Buildings dismantled in the 1990s
In the 1970s, the French state designated this area, located south of the Etang de Berre, as far as Fos-sur-Mer, to concentrate the industrial activities, particularly petrochemical, of the port of Marseille. Since Monday, a large concrete foundation of 450 m2, which served as support for a workshop in the 1970s, has begun to be unsealed in order to allow the ground to regain its natural functions.
The buildings of this workshop were “dismantled in the 1990s but not the concrete foundations, which are very expensive to remove,” explained Thierry Dutoit, research director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), specialist in restoration. ecological, specifying that the recovered concrete would be recycled.
Removing this concrete slab will make it possible to restore the “unique ecosystem in the world” of the “coussouls de Crau”, the site being located on the edge of a national nature reserve of more than 7,400 hectares, explains the port. And to specify that such renaturation operations, consisting of “removing a layer of concrete or bitumen to allow the underlying soil to regain its functions such as the infiltration and storage of water, the fixation of atmospheric carbon and its biodiversity”, are common in cities to recreate islands of freshness.