” Finally ! exclaims Myriam Laïdouni-Denis. The administrative court of Grenoble has just rendered its decision on an appeal filed in early 2020 by this elected EELV in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. “Justice has decided to bury this project definitively,” she reacts. She talks about the Center Parcs de Roybon, which planned to set up 1,000 cottages in the Chambaran forest. Despite the withdrawal of the Pierre et Vacances group in July 2020, “a threat still loomed”, says the elected official who had decided to maintain her appeal despite everything.
“An article, still included in the local urban plan of the Bièvre-Isère community of municipalities, still provided for a major tourist complex in the devolved area, launches Myriam Laïdouni-Denis. We were therefore not immune to a reincarnation of other projects of this kind, which are risks for the water resource, the forest and the inhabitants. »
The court therefore repealed the said article. He specifies in his judgment that “the impact study had been designed to respond specifically to the characteristics” of Center Parcs. As the project was abandoned in July 2020, this study is therefore no longer admissible. “Today, if an investor wishes to build in this place, he will now have to redo all the necessary steps and carry out new studies”, sums up the elected official.
A decision rendered three and a half years after the filing of the appeal
For Myriam Laïdouni-Denis, this judgment is also “a symbol”. “It’s a way of seeing that justice is very slow and to highlight the actions that have resisted for ten years,” she notes. Local policies are important and legal action too, but without the ZAD, we could not have saved this space as it is. We might not have been on a pile of ruins if these complementary struggles had not been there. She cites projects which “did not wait for court decisions” and which had to “destroy everything” because a restoration of the site had finally been ordered.
The elected concludes by making a connection with what is happening in Sainte-Soline. “The people on the ground are essential to prevent the destruction of biodiversity in the name of the general interest”, she insists. She hopes that this court decision is “a hope” for the “fights to come”.