Work on the containment of hazardous waste in the Wittelsheim (Haut-Rhin) underground storage facility can continue. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) refused on May 21 Claim of the Alsace Nature association with the aim of suspending this work after internal emergency remedies have been exhausted after decision of the State Council from February 16.
” The applicants did not sufficiently prove, in the very specific circumstances of the case, the “imminent danger of irreparable damage to the right protected by the Convention” which they refer to and whose assessment was carried out by the domestic authorities, in the urgent case of the dispute, is based on serious reasons of which he does not see ( …) reasons for deviation “, the Court explains in a press release. However, the rejection of this request does not prejudice ” his subsequent decisions on the admissibility or merits of the case “.
If the State Council annulled the order of the administrative court by which suspended operation On November 7, 2023, the latter still has to deliver its judgment on the merits during a hearing scheduled for the first half of 2025.
The underground storage center was originally approved in 1997 for a period of thirty years. Work was halted in 2022 after a fire, leaving several thousand tons of waste abandoned. In the period from 2014 to 2017, stock removal operations were carried out, during which the presence of waste that did not comply with the approval order was discovered. Definitive waste retention was approved by the prefecture’s decree of September 28, 2023, and state services consider it the best possible solution. Opponents of closing the approximately 42,000 tons of stored hazardous waste fear contamination of the groundwater located above the warehouse.
Article published on May 23, 2024