in the Pyrénées-Orientales, the Font-Romeu resort goes all out on artificial snow

Failing to have seen real natural snow, Séverine, Pacôme and Marilou will have come across Les Marseillais, these influencers who became famous thanks to the reality TV show of the same name. “We saw them on the chairlift, they were followed by a whole team”, smiles first after a day of skiing in Font-Romeu (Pyrénées-Orientales), Wednesday February 7. This winter, due to the spring temperatures of the last few weeks and historically low snowfall in the Pyrenees, the resort is operating almost entirely using artificial snow. “It’s better than nothing, but it’s true that it’s a little weird and that ecologically, it raises questions”, admits the Bordelaise. At the end of the day, the contrast between the slopes, artificially snowed, and the surrounding areas, devoid of any snow, is a bit unsettling.

Located 90 km from Perpignan and barely half an hour’s drive from the Spanish border, the Font-Romeu resort is one of the last in the Pyrénées-Orientales department. Exposed to high temperatures – it was 14.7°C at 1,788 meters above sea level on February 3 – it has always relied on cultivated powder to compensate for uncertain snowfall. The area has more than 500 snow cannons and has just invested 30 million euros, notably in a new gondola, to keep the activity going until the middle of the century.

A situation highlighted by the Court of Auditors. In its latest report on the adaptation of mountain resorts to rising temperatures, published on February 6, the jurisdiction estimates that the Pyrenean resort “does not take into account the consequences of climate change” and harshly judges its development plan, which imagines a number of skiers “stable” until 2047. The rapporteurs consider more broadly that the ski resort model “runs out of steam”, particularly in the Pyrenees, where installations are considered more vulnerable to rising temperatures than in the Alps.

“Skiing helps us pay for our transition”

In Font-Romeu, the recommendations of the Court of Auditors were bitterly received by local stakeholders, even more so as the winter holidays approached. The station director, Jacques Alvarez, sees this “an incriminating report”when the mayor without a label of the commune, Alain Luneau, tackles what he considers to be the ignorance of the magistrates of the jurisdiction. “We are neither crazy nor insane”defends the elected official, himself a former director of the station. “Skiing helps us pay for our transition. But currently, the region’s economy depends 90% on skiing.” The resort supports 200 employees, says Jacques Alvarez, for whom winter sports are “the engine of the territory”.

“We don’t want to deny the effects of climate change, we see that they have accelerated. When you are in a t-shirt here, at the end of January… We understand the debate, but we oppose it with arguments.”

Jacques Alvarez, director of the Font-Romeu ski resort

at franceinfo

Since skiing is the economic lifeblood of the region, the operator of the resort and the town hall are committed to continuing to focus on skiing, at least until 2050. For this, they are relying on their hundreds of cannons, their powder factory and the latest generation of snow groomers, capable of managing this artificial snow as best as possible. “It may seem paradoxical, but we are having a very good season, the second best of our existence,” supports Jacques Alvarez, scrolling through the attendance figures on his phone. That Wednesday, nearly 3,000 skiers, many of them from Spain, took advantage of the area’s 30 open slopes.

If its director denies a practice “against nature”, Font-Romeu’s strategy is tense, particularly among the department’s ecologists. “Font-Romeu is banking on techno-solutionism, and this headlong rush prevents it from working on its transition, to anticipate skiing differently,” regrets David Berrué, spokesperson for Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) in the Catalan Pyrenees. For Vincent Vlès, professor of planning and town planning at Toulouse-Jean-Jaurès University and specialist in Pyrenean resorts, Font-Romeu like others “resort to crutches” :

“This is not a denial of climate change, but a denial of the need to anticipate a situation that will become more and more complicated.”

Vincent Vlès, town planner specializing in Pyrenees resorts

at franceinfo

While more than 98% of the resorts in the Pyrenees are at risk in the scenario of global warming of +3°C caused by human activities, the Font-Romeu resort is also located in a department facing a historic drought. for almost two years. The virtual absence of rain in the Pyrénées-Orientales has consequences on the lives of farmers, on the soils, as dry as they usually are at the end of August according to Météo-France, and on the state of water tables and courses of water.

To operate its snow cannons – which mix water and compressed air – the Pyrenean station has the authorization to take 540,000 m3 from the neighboring Bouillouses lake. Its dam, with a capacity of 18 million m3, regulates the flow of the Têt, the longest river in the department. But the structure also serves farmers in the Roussillon plain for their irrigation, provides drinking water for part of the department and produces electricity. The Font-Romeu sample is legal, but contested by some, including environmentalists, who denounce “water grabbing”.

“Some are trying to blame us for the drought”

“The problem arises at the level of social acceptance of this authorization to take water from a dam, while the department is in maximum drought and this year, we will be drinking to the nearest liter, to fight against fires, for agriculture”, explains David Berrué, the local spokesperson for EELV. Environmentalists also wonder about the consequences of this use on the water cycle: the resource taken in winter to cover the slopes is only returned in spring, when the snow melts, and a large part of the resulting water flows to the other side of the Pyrenees, in Spain. Last year, the lack of flow at the end of winter at the Bouillouses dam caused the shutdown of electricity production.

“Some are trying to oppose us with the agricultural world, to make us responsible for the drought”, deplores Jacques Alvarez. The station director draws a diagram of the Bouillouses dam and the authorized water withdrawals. He explains that the water taken by his station does not affect the 7 million m3 reserved for agriculture and drinking water. Just to show that Font-Romeu does not steal water “to no one”.

For Simon Gascoin, CNRS researcher specializing in the study of snow cover, the consequences of ski resort withdrawals on water resources “are very poorly known” : “The volumes of water are not very significant and we cannot say that they are taking away water from farmers.”

But beyond the direct repercussions of pumping, the question that arises is that of sharing a resource which is lacking in the department. If episodes of drought continue, with their share of restrictions and villages supplied by tanker trucks, could the operation of stations like Font-Romeu be called into question? “The day there is no more water to drink, we won’t have pumped for a long time” in the Bouillouses lake, sweeps away the mayor of Font-Romeu. And to add: “When we see the enthusiasm around the activity, we say to ourselves that we cannot give up skiing.”