Eight months after the discharge of washing water in the Scheldt, the prefect of Hauts-de-France, Michel Lalande, announced that he wanted to create a steering committee, and engage the “environmental responsibility“from the Tereos sugar factory.
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Create a steering committee, and engage the “environmental responsibility“from Tereos. Here are the two announcements of the prefect of Hauts-de-France Michel Lalande made on Friday December 4 following the pollution, eight months ago, of the river which connects France and Belgium. At the origin: a dike of a settling basin of the Tereos sugar refinery which broke in full (first) confinement in Thun-Saint-Martin near Cambrai, and which discharged the equivalent of 40 Olympic pools of beet washing water into the Scheldt .
France 3 19/20 Nord-Pas-de-Calais – Friday December 4, 2020
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“This event of the night of April 9 to 10 produced immediate and more distant consequences“, specified the prefect, recalling that Wallonia crossed by the same watercourse has also observed the same effects on the environment and biodiversity as Hauts-de-France.
12 million dead fish
According to the French Office for French Biodiversity, it is indeed 12 million dead fish, a disappearance of 70% of the fish population, and 40% of the diversity of fauna and flora that are to be deplored. Another disastrous consequence: the development of a parasitic species that will be difficult to eradicate.
Many environmental protection associations, joined by Valenciennes and Wallonia, then lodged a complaint against X, opening the field to the question of Tereos’ liability, as well as to the repair and restoration of the polluted environment. The announcements of the prefect Lalande on Friday, December 4, who wishes to directly engage the environmental responsibility of this company, therefore constitute a new step.
Time for emergency measures
When there is pollution, the State is first “forced to face it by taking emergency measures“, explains Maître Muriel Ruef, representing two associations in this affair. It is the latter who, for example, organized the withdrawal of dead fish in the Scheldt, or issued orders to prevent another dike from breaking. .
The time of environmental restoration
The prefect of Hauts-de-France now wishes to turn against Tereos by engaging the environmental responsibility of the sugar factory, “civil liability according to which a causal link between the damage and this company must be reported. We should not speak of administrative responsibility in this matter. It’s a misunderstanding: administrative would mean responsibility for the administration“explains Maître Ruef.
If pollution occurs, two questions arise. The first: how to assess the damage? And the second: who will pay them? However, estimating the damage caused to the environment is particularly difficult, because “mbeing a price on animal life, for example, is particularly complex“says the lawyer.
Deciding on actions to repair this damage is even more so. This is why the North Prefecture is launching a steering committee with environmental protection associations and elected officials on both sides of the border to define these restoration measures: a good way to get everyone around a table and find a consensus.
Michel Lalande, prefect of the North, set up this 04/12 a steering committee relating to the ecological restoration of the#Scheldt, bringing together all the Walloon and Flemish communities, actors and partners concerned. pic.twitter.com/fJanFvSIn6
– Prefect of the Hauts-de-France and Northern region (@ prefet59) December 4, 2020
There remains the thorny question of taking charge of such a long and expensive “repair” which should come back to Tereos.
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