“No and no to trucks”. Signs like these are popping up everywhere in Bardouville. This municipality of 600 inhabitants, in the Rouen metropolitan area, could store nearly 400,000 m3 of so-called inert waste, related to the work of Greater Paris. For four years, 60 trucks will make the round trip each day from Anneville-Ambourville where the waste will be unloaded, which will arrive by barge. The prefect of Seine-Maritime must return his decision Thursday, March 31 on the project. The inhabitants are therefore stepping up the mobilization and calling for a rally this Friday at the Maison Brûlée roundabout, near the A13 motorway.
Emilie feels particularly threatened. She bought in Bardouville in 2014, for its calm, and her house is located right next to the quarry where the waste from Greater Paris would be unloaded. She can’t imagine living with it 120 truck passes per day : “that’s a truck every 5 minutes, it’s not livable. My husband works night shifts at the CHU. He will be home at 7:30 a.m., how will he rest? And we have a little girl. She’s going to play in the middle of the lorry pollution?”
– Anne-Bertrand
The project was initially presented as the storage of inert waste, but the company SEM then filed an amendment to the file, for also polluted waste. Ladislas Lefebvre, another inhabitant of Bardouville is worried about the quality of the water, if the soil proves to be too permeable: “We will put waste on top and after the water, like in coffee, will cross this waste and reach the level of the tablecloths. In 10 years, we will be told: the water is no longer drinkable, it is polluted , What is happening?”
The association feet in the water (created following the floods of 2019) aims to protect the inhabitants of Bardouville from all the nuisances that can affect their quality of life. Its president, Nathalie Aubert, fulminates against the file errors set up by the SEM to obtain the authorization of the prefect: “Two houses (including Emilie’s) do not appear on the cadastral map. On purpose, I think. Or is it that people made this file in 5 minutes considering that it was going to pass cream with the inhabitants. But no!”
It will no longer be the fruit route but the waste route!
Another argument of the inhabitants of Bardouville: the increased risk of accidents. “I don’t understand how this project could have been submitted given the narrowness of the street. How can two trucks pass each other? Plus, it’s on a bend. It’s really complete nonsense”explains Joëlle, who lives in one of the houses by the roadside.
Local residents also fear the fallout of dust in their gardens and on nearby organic orchards : “It will no longer be the fruit route but the waste route!” Last argument of the inhabitants, the Seine by Bike project which must pass through Bardouville. The Métropole de Rouen and the Boucles de la Seine Regional Nature Park have already expressed their opposition to this Greater Paris waste storage project. But the final decision rests with the prefect.