"A construction site that has no reason to exist." The Green group in the National Assembly will launch a parliamentary commission of inquiry on Tuesday into the controversial A69 motorway project between Toulouse and Castres. MEPs will thus use their annual drawing right, which allows each group to set up the committee of its choice.
"It will be a question of highlighting all the collusion that may exist in this case," said Green MP Christine Arrighi, denouncing an "ecocidal scandal of a construction site that has no reason to exist, neither economic, nor financial, and even less environmental".
This motorway project, denounced among others by environmental associations, should link the Castres ring road to Verfeil, east of Toulouse, by 2025 and should extend over 53 km, on 2 x 2 lanes, including "44 km of new route and 9 km of redeveloped sections", according to the concessionaire of the Atosca project. In total, the motorway should cross about twenty municipalities located between the Tarn and the Haute-Garonne. This project has given rise to multiple gatherings of elected officials and environmental activists in recent months.
Hundreds of hectares nibbled and trees cut down
The first point of tension is that the project would extend over more than 300 hectares of agricultural land. According to the prefecture of Tarn, the "total area of the final right-of-way represents 420 ha, including 316 ha of agricultural land". Another area of concern is the amount of trees cut down to carry out this project.
Interviewed by Le Parisien, the director of Atosca in charge of the project said that "200 alignment trees, including large heritage plane trees, will indeed be cut down". "We'll replant twice as many," he said. A promise that struggles to satisfy opponents of the project, who point out that century-old trees play a key role in carbon sequestration.
Read alsoA69 Toulouse-Castres: cost, trees cut down, toll rate... The 10 key figures of the decried motorway
The new motorway promises to save motorists 35 minutes on their journey between Toulouse and Castres, according to a study by the Tarn Chamber of Agriculture. This figure is largely overestimated, according to opponents of the project such as the collective La voie est libre, which rather evokes a gain "between 12 and 15 minutes", with "all the route simulators".