Bottles, plastic packaging, balloons, masks, boxes… In the Rode district, in Toulon, the inhabitants are unfortunately used, raw or not, to seeing the Lovers River carrying something other than mallard ducks or fish. fresh water. And all this waste inevitably ends up, a few kilometers further, in the blue waves of the Mediterranean.
It is to limit this pollution a little that the Eygoutier management union – the historical name of the river – is launching an unprecedented operation. “We have placed five booms in the river or its tributaries, while waiting for the sixth at the Rode” (1)explains Bertrand Ehly, the engineer in charge of the project. “The idea is to retain up to three cubic meters of waste, so that we can then pick it up, sort it and start the maneuver again.”
Efficiency but also pedagogy
That afternoon, the device placed on the Planquette stream, in La Garde, was inaugurated. A red plastic sausage ten meters long floats on this tributary of the Eygoutier, occupying its entire width, and being able to adapt to its height. Not really discreet but it’s done on purpose, assures Bertrand Ehly: “It must appeal to people to do educational work. We will also place an explanatory panel on the banks.”
Alongside the technician, Hélène Bill, mayor of La Garde, and Christian Simon, mayor of La Crau, do not hide their satisfaction. Respectively vice-president and president of the intermunicipal syndicate, 97% financed by TPM, the two elected officials defend the importance of the operation. “This is in addition to the actions of maintenance of the vegetation and cleaning of the watercourse carried out regularly.recalls Christian Simon. In total, more than 150,000 E are spent on cleaning the river every year.”
If the amount of these plastic dams, tested since 2020, is almost anecdotal, the contract signed with the company responsible for collecting the waste is less so: 17,000 euros per year. The price to pay to prevent waste from ending up at the bottom of the sea? “As long as incivility exists, it won’t be enough to eliminate all pollution. But it’s always that less that will go into the Mediterranean”, believes Christian Simon. Small streams – preferably clean ones – make big rivers.
1. Dams also located in Régana and, as far as Eygoutier is concerned, Chemin de la Foux, at La Palasse and in the Vallon des Amoureux.
A river of 15 km
The Eygoutier has its source on the heights of the Moutonne, at the foot of Mont Paradis. With a catchment area of 7,000 ha, the river then stretches for fifteen kilometers to flow into the sea at Toulon, in front of the beaches of Mourillon. The Eygoutier has nine tributaries and a large catchment area.
Like the Las, Toulon’s other river, the Eygoutier has no natural mouth. It was Vauban who diverted these waterways at the end of the 17th century to avoid the silting up of the port where they flowed, and to be able to fit out the military arsenal there. From 1679 to 1681, Vauban will divert the Las towards Lagoubran and the Eygoutier towards the current beaches of Mourillon.
The Eygoutier is also called the “River of Lovers”. Nothing to do, however, with Cupid’s playground: this name would come from an erroneous transcription of the Provençal “riviero deis amourié” (river of mulberry trees), in reference to the trees which grew along its bed.
