Several thousand people - 4,500 according to the organizers, 1,500 according to the gendarmerie - marched this Saturday, March 16 around the lake of Villeneuve-de-la-Raho (Pyrénées-Orientales) to oppose a golf project whose earthworks were started nearby, noted AFP.
Environmental activists or left-wing parties (PC, PS, NPA), departmental or regional elected officials were part of the procession which joined, in a festive and uneventful atmosphere, the town hall of the town, in favor of this contested golf project of 18 holes and 600 housing units, for around thirty hectares of buildings while the department has been facing chronic drought for many months.
“With today's strong mobilization, the Minister of Ecological Transition will signal the end of the project
,” said, amid banners
“No to golf!”
or
“Stop the urbanization of agricultural land”
, Me Mathieu Pons-Serradeil, a lawyer who filed two appeals for two associations
“Pays catalan ecologie”
and
“Agissons66”
.
“Jordan’s rainfall”
“Two months before the European elections, this would be a strong gesture taking into account the concerns of the department in the face of this interminable drought,”
he said.
Adding
: “This would mark his concern with something concrete: “I am saving you the equivalent of the consumption of a town of 10,000 inhabitants to water a green””.
In addition to the town hall, the project is supported by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Medef 66, as well as departmental representatives of the Building and Real Estate federations.
The Pyrénées-Orientales, which for two years have had the
“rainfall of Jordan”
, according to the president of the local chamber of agriculture, are subject to a prefectural decree, extended from month to month, which strongly restricts the use of water. .