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Each week these volunteers meet to pick up the waste that litters the river. But they feel quite alone. #TheyHaveTheSolution
It is an endless pollution which has the gift of exasperating the inhabitants of Carmaux in the Tarn. The Cérou River is a victim of ecological incivility.
Between glass wool, tires, plastics, bottles of alcohol but also household appliances, Cérou is awash in waste. Every week, the citizen collective Nature Urgence Cérou cleans the river but also the banks. Infinite clean-up operations that drive volunteers to despair. This Sunday, February 27, for example, nearly 1,000 liters of consumer waste were collected from the ditches. “There is anger because we cannot understand how such an amount of waste can end up in the river without anyone acting,” reports Thierry Cintas of the Nature Urgence Cérou association.
Faced with a lack of resources, for the past year, volunteers from the Nature Urgence Cérou association have been meeting several times a week to clean up the river. “We are the only ones to care about nature compared to the rest of the organisms that there are in the Tarn”, explains Nicolas Lauriac again.
Communities admit they are overwhelmed by the phenomenon. The town hall does not have the means to put agents permanently to monitor the surroundings. As for the mixed union of the river, it refers to the civility of the population: “We cannot afford to clean up, we are not garbage collectors of the river, the basis would be to avoid polluting”, explains Laurent Vergnes, director of the Cérou mixed river syndicate.
Recently, the city of Carmaux has been providing logistical support to the association by providing them with the material necessary for the collection. The Carmaux firefighters will soon join the volunteers for a major cleaning campaign on the banks.