In the Calanques National Park, a protected area that begins in Marseille, the important work under a close surveillance began in early September to dislike the southern coast of the second city of France, contaminated for two centuries by industrial activities.
The gray deposits that extend over several tens of meters detonate in this idyllic landscape of limestone rocks bordered by the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean.
These “slag” are the “waste for the production of old factories, used as embankments for the creation of roads and parking lots,” explains Mélody Gros, head of contaminated projects and soils contaminated in ADEM (Environment and Energy Management Agency), the State ordered by the State to carry out the operation.
A project began in September
In a hill with a view to the people of Pescadores de Goudes, a high place of instagrammable tourism of Marseille, Las Palas and other construction machinery are activated to develop the base of the main workers in the coming months.
“This project meets a public health objective,” says Mélody Gros. The slag, present in a total area of 29 hectares, is loaded with metals such as lead or arsenic, which pollute soils and sea and are harmful to human health.
Therefore, the State, condemned at the end of 2024 to dislike the area, is preparing to “put security”, under the terms of the AdeMe and the prefecture of Bouches-Du-Rhône, 20 slag deposits considered “priority with respect to its potential for pollution of the environment and people.”
However, the Marseille Administrative Court mentioned in its judgment the presence of 77 deposits. But Mélody Gros says that Ademe “would not have the ability to withdraw everything.”
The site, which will run for two periods of seven months until 2027, will cost a total of 14 million euros, financed by half in the State, the rest by the department of Bouches-Du-Rhône, the city of Marseille and the metropolis of Aix-Marleyleille.
Hazardous waste stored in the garden
Initially, 2,500 tons of debris will be treated in March 2026. One will be sent by trucks to a hazardous waste storage site in the garden, the other confined on the site in waterproof membranes, crowned by a new landscape.
Despite the numerous precautions taken to avoid any dispersion in the environment, such as the construction of barriers or the installation of large bags to retain pollutants, those responsible for the operation are fighting to completely reassure residents.
The installation of a 250 square meter confinement tent at the main base of the site, just above the Goudes, particularly worries the 500 permanent inhabitants. Because after having removed the slag with vacuum cleaners, they will be downloaded by trucks in containers placed in the store before transfer to the garden.
Romain Garoute, president of the neighborhood’s interest committee (CIQ), regrets the choice of this place for the temporal storage of slag, which would have preferred to see in another place “more out of the wind.” “We could have avoided certain unnecessary risks,” he believes, although he says “reassured by the methodology” presented by Ademe.
Prudent environmental associations
Environmental associations have also carefully followed the preparation of the site and, while recognizing the “remarkable work” of the agency, issuing some reservations.
Several devices have been installed continuously the air quality on the coast and two thresholds: “surveillance” and “alert”, determined. In case of exceeding, measures that can reach the temporary arrest of the site will be taken.
But this remains insufficient for Rolland Dadena, president of the Southern Coastal Health Association, which asked the Prefect “to activate a health monitoring plan” during the duration of the site.
He is concerned that the “already existing health risk is” increased ten times “when handling very fragile toxic materials.
It would be “unthinkable” that the work “leads to an exalution for the population,” he insists, observing the coastal landscape blackened by the slag.
Source: BFM TV
