Umpteenth tug-of-war between environmentalists and local authorities. While a felling session of a hundred plane trees is planned on the scene tomorrow, several vehicles of gendarmes were mobilized this Thursday, August 30 to protect the construction site of the A69 motorway, supposed soon to connect Castres to Toulouse, revealed BFMTV. The project, which is 54 kilometers long, arouses the anger of environmental activists but also farmers, whose land will be crossed by this arm of highway.
Ecological but also cultural protests
These environmental activists, including the collective "La Voie est Libre", had already mobilized at the end of April, shortly after the work for the construction of this four lanes had begun. "Toulouse-Castres motorway. Fifteen minutes gained, thousands of trees massacred, "warned the members of the collective who had called thousands of demonstrators to mobilize against this highway project.
Some protesters had even been taken into custody, like Thomas Brail, of the National Tree Monitoring Group (GNSA), who had been arrested for "stopping an excavator preparing to dig at the foot of a 130-year-old plane tree," according to a tweet from the collective. In judicial language, it is an "obstruction to the construction site", reports the prosecutor of Toulouse, Samuel Vuelta-Simon.
But the construction of this highway is also experiencing other forms of protest. The castle of Scopont, listed as a historical monument, is thus directly threatened by the A69: the road axis should pass 300 meters from the castle and 180 meters from its neo-Gothic pavilion. The owner of the premises intends to file a complaint in September, hoping that the highway, recognized as a public utility, is built more than 500 meters from his domain.
The A69, which aims to open up certain areas but also decongest road traffic around Toulouse, should be accessible in 2025.