More 200 fish: pike, roach, bream, chub, hotus were found dead, near the Colmar marina and along the canal.
The discovery was made at the beginning of last week, near the canalized Lauch. Those are fishermen, accustomed to watching the waterways who gave the alert.
Judicial investigation opened
A judicial inquiry has been opened by the French biodiversity office to find out the causes of the death of these fish. An investigation that risks being long since there are three different flows at this location.
– Guillaume Chhum
“There is a flow coming from the west, one through underground channels and another at the level of the Lauch. Inevitably all this accumulates at the level of the port of Colmar. These are much slower waters and potentially toxic fluxes can accumulate and cause problems as has been observed,” explains Ywen Namokel, the technical manager of the Haut-Rhin fishing federation.
angry walkers
Along the canal, walkers observe the damage. This is the case of Hubert, a Colmarian who alerted France Bleu Alsace: “I’ve never seen so many dead fish at the marina. I’m disgusted and disappointed. All these years I’ve walked around this sector and there, it’s sickening!”
– Guillaume Chhum
Pollution in streams and rivers are quite rare in the Haut-Rhin, there are less than half a dozen.
For the past year, fishermen have been working with the green brigades, the territorial management and also the environmental samu, to set up very soon a smartphone application, to report pollution and report it in real time to the services of the French office for biodiversity, to speed up investigations .