(Saïx) Thousands of opponents of a motorway in the south-west of France demonstrated on Saturday to denounce a project which they consider contradictory with the climate emergency, during a weekend of festive mobilization, but under high surveillance.
French authorities have closely followed this new gathering of environmentalists, which comes nearly a month after a demonstration against the creation of large water reserves, in a department in western France, and which had turned violent. clash between law enforcement and opponents. Three people were seriously injured and a lively controversy over the excessive use of force then broke out.
Dancing to the rhythm of percussion, sometimes in the rain, about 8,200 people according to the organizers, 4,500 according to the prefecture, walked all afternoon on paths and through the woods, following part of the route of the future A69 motorway, supposed to connect the cities of Toulouse and Castres.
Some demonstrators brandished banners: “Less energy, fewer cars, less tar”, or “A69, a dead-end highway that will end up spinning”.
Several elected officials oppose the highway project, including the environmental deputy (EELV) Julien Bayou who called it “anachronistic”. “It’s a project that dates back to the 90s, which thinks of the territory and the development of the territory only with the car and the motorways. And in fact that is no longer possible! “, declared to AFP Sandrine Rousseau, ecologist deputy, on the spot, estimating that “there is really no need for an additional highway”.
PHOTO LIONEL BONAVENTURE, FRANCE PRESS AGENCY
But other elected officials support the project, which would reduce the Castres-Toulouse journey by around twenty minutes in 2025, from a duration of just over an hour today.
Earlier, during a press conference, the environmental associations including the collective The way is free, Extinction Rebellion, the Peasant Confederation and the Uprisings of the Earth (SLT), organizers of the demonstration, asked “the immediate stop of the construction site.
Their representatives recalled their proposal for the development of the existing road and denounced the loss of agricultural land or biodiversity that the construction of this 53 km stretch of motorway would entail.
PHOTO NACHO DOCE, REUTERS
Atosca, private concessionaire of the A69, considers this project “exemplary” for the environment or employment. Regarding agricultural land, the planned footprint has been reduced from 380 to 300 hectares, according to its general manager Martial Gerlinger.
The French Ministry of Transport said on Friday that a review of the seven motorway projects in progress had been requested in January, “in view of current issues” relating to the environment.
“The A69 project is no exception to this review process”, adds the ministry, but “the work has started, and a contract binding the State has been signed with the concessionaire”.
The Tarn department, where the event is taking place, has already been bereaved during a previous mobilization against a dam project in 2014.
A 21-year-old environmental activist, Rémi Fraisse, was found dead on the Sivens dam site, after clashes between opponents and the police. Five months later, the project was abandoned in favor of a water reservoir reduced by half, and the government evacuated the site occupied for sixteen months by militants.