Among the trees, opponents as determined as ever. In Paris, deputies who will look into the matter for several months… For several days, the construction of the A69, a 53-kilometer motorway between Toulouse and Castres, has been at the center of all attention. On the ground, the tension does not subside. Tuesday, February 27, “squirrels”, these demonstrators firmly opposed to the project, were still perched in cabins built in oaks and plane trees of the Crém’Arbre, the name of the zone to be defended (ZAD) located in the town of Saïx (Tarn).
Emptied of a large part of its occupants by the police to let the Atosca concessionaire resume deforestation, this place, surrounded by gendarmes and CRS, has become a nerve point for face-to-face confrontation. “We give them our support by reading poems and playing the drum. It’s better than crying”, testified Paloma, installed in a makeshift shelter hastily erected facing the small woods. At the end of the morning, six gendarmes from Cnamo, the national mobility support unit, once again tried to bring down the activists.
A few hours later, hundreds of kilometers away, the commission of inquiry “on the legal and financial arrangement of the A69 motorway project” began its work in the National Assembly. “The government choice will ultimately be to transform the road into a concession and the region will end up validating in 2014, believing that it is up to the State to assume responsibility”remembered Martin Malvy, president of the Midi-Pyrénées region from 1998 to 2015.
On this first day of hearings devoted to the genesis of the project, former political and administrative leaders, such as the former prefect of Tarn, François Philizot, all defended the A69, the only way, according to them, to open up Castres and the south of the Tarn. “At the time we were very concerned about the balance of the territory and the fact that the dynamism of the Toulouse metropolis also benefited other cities.argued Dominique Perben, minister of transport from 2005 to 2007, who had received the main industrialist in the area, Pierre Fabre, creator of the eponymous group and ardent defender of the highway. A minister, in the idea that I have of him, is someone who must discuss with the people who have responsibilities. Mr. Fabre was very supportive of this project. »
The dialogue goes in circles
Even if the environmentalist deputies repeatedly questioned the first speakers on the existence of studies on alternative solutions such as doubling the N126, the dialogue quickly turned in circles. “To arrive at so much excess and anger for a decision taken twenty years ago… (…) Our times are beyond me”observed Mr. Malvy.
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