Demonstrators protest against sandpit extension and environmental destruction in Nantes

They have arrived in Nantes city center. Several hundred people, nearly 2,000 according to the organizers, have been demonstrating since Sunday morning in Loire-Atlantique against the project to extend the sandpits of Saint-Colomban and against “industry’s attacks on the environment”. The traveling parade was organized at the call of the collective Earth Uprisings, one of the movements behind the mobilization against the mega basins in Sainte-Soline on January 25. The participants, of all ages, traveled by bicycle or tractor. They joined Nantes at the beginning of the afternoon in order to unite, in front of the city’s university hospital, with a gathering of opponents of the project for a new public hospital. These were about 500.

In addition to the demonstration itself, several punch actions took place this Sunday. One of them aimed to uproot lily of the valley plants to replace them with buckwheat seeds. Garden hoses and plastic greenhouses were also damaged on a vegetable farm. The water inlet hatch of a concrete plant in the Nantes conurbation was also sabotaged and cemented. All this in order to “denounce the intensive use of water”.

Extension of 70 hectares

A copious police force was deployed along the route this Sunday morning, as well as in the city center and on the island of Nantes, where the construction site has been taking place, for a little over a year. , construction of the disputed hospital.

In Saint-Colomban, 25 km south of Nantes, the manufacturers GSM and Lafarge, which already extract 700,000 tonnes of alluvial sand per year over more than 100 hectares, plan to extend their quarries by 70 hectares, in areas that were previously classified agricultural land. What arouse the anger of part of the population and farmers. In an attempt to calm things down, the town hall, in favor of the project, organized a citizen consultation last January. The “yes” had won with 54.37% of the votes.