The director of the La Bresse ski school (Vosges) makes his mea culpa.
Éric Flieller admitted on Wednesday to having transported “70 tonnes” of snow to the station by truck at the end of December, to “save jobs”, a few days after a controversy launched by environmental associations which castigated the practice.
The idea was to preserve the resort's kindergarten, then lacking snow, and "maintain the economy of a region", he indicated, confirming comments made to the daily Vosges Matin.
He explains that he brought “70 tons” of snow in a truck driven by a ski school instructor holding a heavy goods vehicle license: “that represents 50 m2 by 50 cm thick, it’s ridiculous,” he explained. - he asserted, castigating a “ridiculous controversy” and “which has no reason to exist”.
“I'm really sorry, I didn't think I had done something” that would take “such proportions,” he added, saying he was “stunned” by the scale of the controversy.
“It saved the end of the Christmas vacation season” by allowing “classes for toddlers” and “school skiing” to be completed in kindergarten, he added.
This also saved “jobs throughout the Vosges basin”, he insisted, explaining that he decided on this transport so that “everyone gets by: the tourists and the people who make a living from it”.
“If that’s a crime…”
A widespread practice in stations
Environmental associations, including Alsace Nature and Lorraine Nature Environnement, criticized this transport from a summit located a few kilometers away at the end of last week.
According to them, it took place at the end of December, when the La Bresse ski resort was the only one in the Vosges Massif to be open, due to lack of sufficient snow.
The associations had notably highlighted screenshots from the resort's webcam showing that a slope contained only a little snow on December 25 at the end of the day, then much more during the night of December 26.
It was groomed at the very beginning of the day and used as a toboggan run.
But according to Éric Flieller, the snow transport took place “on January 6”.
Quoted by the daily Vosges Matin, the mayor of La Bresse refused to condemn the ski school of the resort, whose ski area extends from 900 m to 1,350 m above sea level.
She recalled that carrying snow on the slopes is a widespread practice in resorts, “to make dressings”.