Their fight is not over. Some 300 people demonstrated on Saturday in front of the town hall of Wittelsheim against the maintenance, confirmed by the government this week, of the 42,000 tonnes of final waste buried in the Stocamine site, in this commune in Haut-Rhin.
Banners reading “Stocamine no poisonous inheritance” or “emergency, let’s save the water table” stood alongside hundreds of posters representing a skull with an Alsatian headdress, plastered all around the town hall and the park on which the gathering took place.
“We cannot afford to let this happen. Once again this ecocide will affect millions of Europeans. This is the largest water table in Europe,” recalled LFI deputy for Bas-Rhin Emmanuel Fernandes.
The Destocamine collective, at the initiative of the gathering, does not lose anger and does not intend to give up, despite the announcement by the Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu on Tuesday to the elected officials of Haut-Rhin not to launch a new operation of destocking of this buried waste on the Stocamine site.
For this new demonstration, the organizers were reinforced by the presence of Extinction Rebellion, the Peasant Confederation and left-wing political parties.
Work completed “from 2027”?
Christophe Béchu agreed on Tuesday with the opinion expressed in January 2021 by Barbara Pompili, who preceded him to this position. She then considered that destocking was a riskier operation, both for staff and for the environment, than permanent burial. The minister announced on Tuesday his intention to begin “immediately” work to contain toxic waste at Stocamine, so that it could be completed “by 2027”.
He maintains that this is the “only solution to ensure that waste cannot contaminate the water table” in Alsace which supplies drinking water to nearly 8 million inhabitants.
The LFI deputies responded by calling for a parliamentary commission of inquiry.