The administrative court of Rouen condemned for the first time the State to compensate a market gardener, after decrees prohibiting the marketing of agricultural products from 216 municipalities following the fire in Lubrizol in 2019.
The state was ordered on July 23 to pay the producer 4,354 euros in compensation, including 500 euros for moral damage, according to the judgment.
Forced to destroy his crops
The organic market gardener who had started a market gardening activity in the spring of 2019 in Morgny-la-Pommeraye, 18 km from Rouen, is one of the producers who had to destroy their crops after prefectural decrees prohibiting the marketing of agricultural products in 216 communes of five departments.
This ban, “intended to prevent a risk of contamination linked to polluting fallout following the fire on the Seveso industrial site classified at the high threshold”, from Lubrizol to Rouen, was in force from September 28 to October 18, recalls the tribunal.
According to the judgment, “the prefect takes advantage of the applicant’s irregular situation on the date of the incident”. But “it emerges from the terms of a letter from the prefecture dated October 25, 2019 that” the operator had “filed on September 24, 2019 a prior declaration to operate”, believe the judges. And “it does not result from the instruction that the services of the prefecture would have sent to the operator the formal notice to regularize his situation”, add the judges.
At least 1,800 farmers affected by soot from the fire
In October 2019, the state estimated that at least 1,800 farmers had been affected by soot from the fire at the Lubrizol plant in Rouen. And the Minister of Agriculture Didier Guillaume had assured that the fire had caused farmers an overall damage estimated “between 40 and 50 million” euros.
The multinational had pledged without communicating an amount a solidarity fund to compensate producers under an agreement on October 25 with the National Agricultural Fund for the mutualization of health and environmental risk (FMSE). The latter intervenes to compensate farmers for the economic losses suffered as a result of diseases or environmental accidents.
On September 26, 2019, 9,505 tonnes of chemicals had burned on the Lubrizol site in Rouen and on that of the neighboring company Normandie Logistique.
The fire, which did not cause a victim, had caused a gigantic cloud of black smoke 22 km long with fallout of soot as far as Hauts-de-France.