Growth going against environmental issues.
The ski resorts of Alpe d'Huez (Isère) and Grand-Bornand (Haute-Savoie) each had their respective town planning plans revoked within a month by the Grenoble administrative court in decisions consulted on Friday by the 'AFP.
In question, their “insufficient environmental assessment” and “inconsistencies” in the assessment of the needs for new tourist beds, explains the jurisdiction which canceled the local urban planning plan (PLU) of Alpe d’Huez in a decision dated February 15, and gave 18 months to the commune of Grand-Bornand to regularize its Wednesday.
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Alpe d'Huez, a very tourist resort, populated year-round by just under 1,300 inhabitants, planned in its town planning document the creation of 2,400 new beds with the hope of reaching 31,000 beds on the horizon. 2034.
“Encourage stations to be less greedy”
The court notably justified its decision by the fact that “no alternative hypothesis aimed at rehabilitating the nearly 60% of cold beds in the municipality was really considered”.
“It is not a question of prohibiting the creation of beds”, underlined Elodia Bonel, lawyer for the FNE Isère association, “but of encouraging the stations to be less greedy, and to rather favor the renovation of the already existing real estate.
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This is the second time that the PLU for the Alpe d'Huez resort has been canceled in court.
Already in 2019, it had been canceled because it “did not respect the balance desired by law between urban development and environmental protection”, recalled the France Nature Environnement (FNE) Isère association which brought forward the requests for annulment in court.
As for Grand-Bornand (around 2,000 inhabitants), the PLU planned to create 1,500 additional beds “for exclusively tourist purposes”, in an area “until then devoid of urbanization”, noted the administrative court.
Artificial snow in the viewfinder
Motivating his decision, he also underlined that the municipality “did not sufficiently explain the environmental impacts of the choices it had made regarding water consumption for snow production”.
According to the environmental authority, annual municipal water consumption for artificial snow increased by 53% between 2016 and 2019.
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“The administrative court noted some inadequacies, both in terms of evaluation and justification of our choices,” reacted the mayor of Grand-Bornand, André Perrillat-Amédé.
“It gave us the opportunity to correct these deficiencies noted within 18 months, which is what we will endeavor to do,” he assured.
A month ago, the Court of Auditors sounded the alarm on the economic model of French skiing, which it said was “running out of steam”.
It noted in particular an unsuitable “real estate asset” and a weakened “financial balance”, even more so in a context of “climate change”.
This report was welcomed by the elected environmentalists of the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region who, according to them, “proves them right”.