“The work is suspended until the court, which will decide shortly, examines the legality of the substance of the decree”, taken by the prefect of Haut-Rhin in January, said the court. A new hearing on the merits concerning this work will therefore take place by the end of the year.
“There is a serious doubt as to the legality of the decision to allow work to continue, in particular the backfilling of block 15 and the completion of certain containment barriers of the mine galleries”, argued the administrative court in a press release. .
Asbestos and arsenic
This former potash mine is located in Wittelsheim, near Mulhouse. Near the water table in Alsace, the largest in Europe, it still has, in its galleries threatening to collapse, 550 meters underground, some 42,000 tonnes of hazardous industrial waste (asbestos, arsenic. ..) but non-nuclear, buried at the turn of the 2000s.
Arguing the deterioration of the state of the mine, the Haut-Rhin prefecture had authorized the launch of preparatory work for the closure in January, although a dispute on the merits is still in progress as to the definitive storage or not of the waste.
This work, which began on May 10, concerns the construction of concrete dams. Then in June, the final backfilling of “block 15” was planned, where a fire had occurred in 2002, which put an abrupt end to the addition of new waste.
long saga
Since that date, the future of Stocamine, originally supposed to remain a non-permanent repository, has been a source of disagreement and uncertainty. After much procrastinating, the state decided in January 2021 in favor of permanent burial of the remaining waste under concrete.
But the administrative justice canceled in October 2021 the prefectural decree published, to the great satisfaction of communities and environmental defenders demanding that as much waste as possible be removed as long as the galleries are accessible. A new decree must still be taken after an opinion from the Environmental Authority and a public inquiry.