The Strasbourg Administrative Court interrupts the work prior to the closure of the underground storage site of hazardous waste which threaten the water table of Alsace.
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Enteenth stroke and new setback for the State in the endless Stocamine soap. The Strasbourg Administrative Court has just suspected the work prior to the closure of the underground storage site of hazardous waste from Stocamine to Wittelsheim, in Haut-Rhin. Barely started, the immense preparation project for final containment, acted by the government in January 2021, after years of procrastination, is stopped. The first operations had started on May 10, with concrete injection to build waterproof dams around the galleries.
“The work is suspended until the court, which will decide within a close period, examines the legality at the bottom of the decree” taken by the prefect of Haut-Rhin in January, announced on Wednesday 25 May, the administrative court of Strasbourg. The jurisdiction had been seized the same day at the start of the work of a summary remedy suspended by the European community of Alsace (CEA, grouping of the Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin departments) and the Alsace Nature association. This suspension is temporary. A new audience, on the bottom of the file this time, should take place by the end of the year.
Some 42,000 tonnes of very toxic waste (arsenic, asbestos, chrome, incineration residues, etc.) are buried at 550 meters underground, in galleries dug at the right of an old potash mine. They threaten, in the long term, the water table in Alsace, the largest in Europe, which supplies with drinking water some 7 million people on both sides of the Rhine. Their fate has been opposing for twenty years, as appeal to court, supporters of destocking (local communities and environmental associations) to the State, which defends confinement.
“There is a serious doubt as to the legality of the decision to allow the continuation of the work, in particular the backfilling of block 15 and the completion of certain barriers of containment of the galleries of the mine”, estimates the court, in his judgment of May 25. The famous “Bloc 15” had been ravaged by a fire in 2002, marking the stopping of Stocamine activities and the start of the soap. Flammable products, especially pesticides, had been buried there, illegally. The Strasbourg prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation in the summer of 2021 to shed light on the exact nature of the waste stored in Stocamine. François Zind, the lawyer for Alsace Nature, is delighted with the decision of the administrative court, which could prevent “flowing concrete on proofs” and leaves the way open to the deconfine.
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