Category: Squatting / Free Spaces / Protest Sites

March 7th, 2015

A bit­ter bat­tle over a dam that has pit­ted French farm­ers against envi­ron­men­tal­ists may have final­ly come to an close Fri­day fol­low­ing a rul­ing by local lead­ers, though the for­mer are like­ly to be hap­pi­est with the deci­sion.

The depart­men­tal coun­cil in Tarn, south­west France, vot­ed in favour 46 to 43 of cre­at­ing a dam and reser­voir at around half the size of the orig­i­nal­ly pro­posed project.

They also asked the gov­ern­ment to forcibly remove “with­out delay” a group of envi­ron­men­tal pro­test­ers who have occu­pied the site of the pro­posed Sivens dam for the past nine months in an effort to block con­struc­tion.

A lit­tle over an hour lat­er, armed police entered the area to begin clear­ing the pro­test­ers’ camp.

Protests, bar­ri­cades and tragedy

It may be the final chap­ter of a saga that has been the source of intense dis­pute in France for sev­er­al years – and result­ed in the death of at least one pro­test­er.

The project, for which plan­ning began in 1989, was con­ceived to pro­vide bet­ter irri­ga­tion for local farms by damming the Riv­er Tescou to cre­ate a reser­voir.

After years of delib­er­a­tion and fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies, the final plans were giv­en offi­cial approval in 2004, envi­sion­ing the cre­ation of a reser­voir hold­ing 1.5 mil­lion cubic metres of water.

But the €8.4m-project faced fierce oppo­si­tion from the start from envi­ron­men­tal­ists, includ­ing France’s green par­ty the EELV, who argued it would mean the destruc­tion of sev­er­al hectares of wet­lands – a haven for wildlife – and ben­e­fit only a small num­ber of farms.

In Octo­ber 2013, mem­bers of a rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ist group known as the “Zadistes” began occu­py­ing the con­struc­tion site. Police twice removed the pro­test­ers from the site, most recent­ly in May 2014, but both times they returned.

Then, one year lat­er, the dam project made inter­na­tion­al head­lines after a 21-year-old envi­ron­men­tal activist, Rémi Fraisse, was killed dur­ing a protest after being struck on the head by a flash grenade thrown by police.

His death trig­gered demon­stra­tions in sev­er­al cities in France against police bru­tal­i­ty, which them­selves led to vio­lent clash­es with author­i­ties.

The pro­test­ers have also pro­voked the ire of local farm­ers, who sup­port the dam. Most recent­ly, around 130 farm­ers set up bar­ri­cades to stop activists from access­ing the site.

Final­ly, on Octo­ber 31, 2014, work on the dam was halt­ed and the orig­i­nal plans for the project scrapped entire­ly by Ecol­o­gy Min­is­ter Ségolène Roy­al the fol­low­ing Jan­u­ary.

Roy­al gave local author­i­ties two options: build a small­er reser­voir of about 750,000 cubic metres fur­ther upstream from the orig­i­nal site, or build four sep­a­rate (and small­er) reser­voirs.

It was this first option the gen­er­al coun­cil opt­ed for on Fri­day, judg­ing the sec­ond sce­nario too expen­sive.

Coun­cil pres­i­dent Thier­ry Carcenac told AFP that fur­ther stud­ies would be car­ried out to deter­mine exact­ly where the new reser­voir would be built, adding that there was a “lee­way of plus or minus 10 per­cent” on the final size of the dam.

Farm­ers hap­py, envi­ron­men­tal­ists scepi­cal

The gov­ern­ment, so long stuck between a rock and a hard place – unable to please both farm­ers and envi­ron­men­tal­ists – will be hop­ing a com­pro­mise accept­able to both sides has now been reached.

In a joint state­ment, Roy­al and Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Stéphane Le Foll wel­comed the council’s deci­sion. The new plan, they said, “while meet­ing all the cri­te­ria of envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, will secure the water sup­ply nec­es­sary for agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion at a much high­er rate.”

How­ev­er, ini­tial reac­tions sug­gest the farm­ers may be hap­pi­er than the envi­ron­men­tal­ists with Friday’s deci­sion.

The FNSEA farm­ers’ union praised the council’s “courage” and said it now want­ed to see “the respect of law, the evac­u­a­tion of the Zadistes and con­struc­tion work to start with­out delay”.

The EELV, in con­trast, said the revised project “in the end resolves noth­ing”, though it wel­comed the aban­don­ment of the orig­i­nal plans.

“In the absence of addi­tion­al stud­ies, there is noth­ing to sug­gest that legal doubts over respect for the envi­ron­ment have been alle­vi­at­ed,” the par­ty said in a state­ment.

Mean­while, there appeared to be mixed reac­tions from pro­test­ers as the police moved in to dis­band their camp on Fri­day.

“Most left the scene qui­et­ly,” police spokesper­son Stéphane Rap­pailles told Reuters.

How­ev­er, oth­ers were less will­ing to give in. Around 25 Zadistes had to be forcibly removed, said Rap­pailles, while six were arrest­ed.

“[We will] hide in the woods,” one pro­test­er, named Chris­t­ian, told AFP. “We will not leave.”