“This is the choice that is imposed on all farmers who care about both their yield and the environment. “ This “Choice”, praised by Yara, world leader in fertilizer manufacturers, these are ammonitrates. Less ammonia emitting than other types of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer (urea and nitrogenous solution), of course, but much more dangerous, due to their explosive potential. The Lebanese are still under the shock of the explosion of the stock of 2,750 tons stored in the port of Beirut, which devastated the city and killed more than 200 people, on August 4, 2020. And Toulouse have not forgotten AZF and his 31 deaths on September 21, 2001.
France is the first consumer of ammonium nitrates (also called ammonium nitrates) in Europe and the second globally. The Norwegian giant Yara has three production sites in France, all classified as high threshold Seveso: in Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), in Montoir-de-Bretagne (Loire-Atlantique) and in Ambès (Gironde).
For ten years, the Montoir-de-Bretagne plant has been the subject of prefectural orders of formal notice for excessive discharges of dust into the air and nitrogen into the water. The last dates back to June 2020. The Ambès site, about thirty kilometers from Bordeaux, is also targeted by several formal notices: that of December 18, 2020 notably criticizes the operator for not having carried out “No surveillance” of air pollutant releases since 2018.
Grandpuits, Petit-Mesnil, Mont-Cauvaire …
In Saint-Malo (Ille-et-Vilaine), overwhelmed by ammonia fumes, residents of the Timac Agro plant, a subsidiary of the Roullier group (five sites in France), and ecological associations took legal action at the end of May 2020. In Mazingarbe (Pas-de-Calais), it is the employees who take turns monitoring the huge tank filled with 750 tons of ammonia since the boss, the Spanish group Maxam, abandoned the site after the start-up. liquidation in January. In Grandpuits (Seine-et-Marne), the ammonia leak that occurred on October 6, 2020 at one of the two ammonium nitrate production sites of Borealis (GPN’s parent company, the former AZF), all close to the Total refinery, is the subject of the first report, published mid-March, the brand new Bureau of Investigation and Analysis on Industrial Risks (BEA-RI).
The BEA-RI was created in December 2020 by the Ministry of Ecological Transition after the Lubrizol fire. Five days after the accident, the shutdown of the second Borealis site, in the port area of Rouen, after a transformer problem, made residents fear an AZF scenario. Among the eight investigations opened by the BEA-RI since its creation, another concerns ammonitrates: the fire that occurred on December 3, 2020 in a cattle farm in Petit-Mesnil (Aube). About 120 tonnes of fertilizer were stored near the burning shed.
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