A story of struggle over “Living Water” by Vanina Delmas

It is a story unfairly buried in the oblivion of ecological struggles. A story between past and present, which still irrigates the veins and the memory of its protagonists. Living archives, still welded to the shores of the one they defended more than thirty years ago: the Haute-Loire Valley. In 1986, the Ministry of the Environment, the Public Establishment for the Planning of the Loire and its Tributaries (Epala) and the Loire-Bretagne Water Agency signed a charter to develop the Loire. Huge dam projects are emerging, including that of the Serre de la Fare, a few kilometers from the source of the longest river in France.

Objectives: to control the vagaries of the river thanks to the water reservoirs which will prevent floods similar to that of 1980 – which killed eight people in Brives – Charensac. Which will also make it possible to store water for agriculture, to cool nuclear power stations and to transform the gorges of the Loire into a tourist showcase – and therefore create jobs. A program full of promises but which requires engulfing 20 kilometers of nature including two villages. A heavy price that the inhabitants of the valley refuse to pay. So they created the SOS Loire Vivante committee and set up on the site to block the work. The non-violent occupation ceased in 1994, when Michel Barnier, then Minister of the Environment, announced the abandonment of the program.

It is this citizen resistance in the face of concrete monsters and the cynicism of the French bureaucracy that Alain Bujak and Damien Roudeau narrate in Living Water. A dense graphic story, loaded with tenderness and memories, crowned with the Tournesol prize at the Angoulême off festival, which rewards albums honoring the defense of the environment, social justice, citizenship or the preservation of spaces .

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