agriculture Opponents of the project to draw water from groundwater will mobilize on March 25
Demonstration in Sainte-Soline, October 30, 2022. — Pascal Lachenaud
- Opponents of mega basin projects are announcing this Thursday the organization of an unprecedented mobilization on March 25.
- The demonstrations in Sainte-Soline had brought together several thousand demonstrators and resulted in a major deployment security forces.
- Opponents demanded a moratorium, but work on the basin resumed in Sainte-Soline shortly after the end of the demonstrations.
Opponents of “mega-basins”, these water reserves drawn from groundwater for agricultural use, hope to unite “several dozen thousands of people” during a new event announced this Thursday for March 25, in a place still to be discovered. specify.
“We are announcing the biggest historical rally in Poitou-Charentes, the biggest rally for the defense of water as a common good,” Julien Le Guet, spokesperson for the group of opponents “Bassines non merci”, on the sidelines of a press briefing.
16 basins planned in Deux-Sè vres
At the end of October, several thousand people (4,000 according to the authorities, 7,000 according to the organisers) had gathered in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres) to protest against the construction of a water reservoir, the second of a project that has 16 in the department.
Some opponents had succeeded in briefly force the gates of the site, before being repelled by some of the 1,500 gendarmes mobilized to prohibit access to the site. Demonstrators and police had deplored the dozens of injured, a handful of them having been hospitalized.
À Following this mobilization, the collective of opponents had given fifteen days to the government to declare a “moratorium on all water storage projects” and put an end to the Sainte-Soline site. But it resumed on November 8, while a similar project was validated. in neighboring Vienne.
The “bassine” de Sainte-Soline is one of the 16 reserves of several hundred thousand m3 that are to be created in the Deux-Sèvres. Éelaborated; by a group of 400 farmers with the support of the State, the project aims to make water available for irrigation in summer, by pumping surface water tables in winter. A first deduction was made. commissioning at; Mauzé-sur-Mignon, where a demonstration of magnitude had already took place last spring.