Several hundred people – a thousand according to the organizers, between 500 and 800 according to the gendarmes – demonstrated on Saturday morning against the “grabbing” of water in front of the semiconductor production site of STMicroelectronics, in Crolles (Isère) .
The procession of activists, dressed in blue, wanted to be “peaceful, joyful and family”.
Gathered under the slogan “Water, not chips”, the demonstrators are contesting the factory extension project, announced last summer by the Franco-Italian company and carried out in partnership with the American GlobalFoundries, synonymous according to them with an excess of water consumption.
The project, worth a total of 5.7 billion euros, must be supported under the France 2030 plan, and by the European Union under the “Chips Act”, a plan to double the production of semi -drivers in the EU by 2026.
“We are worried about water resources and democracy”, denounces Julien, one of the organizers of the demonstration, who prefers to remain anonymous. The thousand jobs promised with the extension of the site “cannot justify everything”, affirms the activist, who questions the choices in terms of water sharing. In the gathered crowd, another activist, Emilie, “prefers that I be limited to screen time than to drinking water”.
“We say there is no problem with water withdrawal, but what about the future?” Asks Sébastien Triqueneaux, researcher at a CNRS institute in Grenoble and member of Scientists in Rebellion.
“Our efforts have enabled us to recycle 43% of the water used in Crolles in 2022. In 2023, ST Crolles is aiming for a water recycling rate of 49%. The site’s ambition is to move to a higher rate to 60% and become one of the first semiconductor sites in Europe to recycle its waste water for the manufacture of ultra-pure water”, replied STMicroelectronics in a message to AFP.
“All of the water used is returned to nature, either in liquid form after treatment (85%) or in the form of evaporation (15%)”, it is further explained.
The STMicroelectronics site, and the municipality of Crolles in which it is located, are supplied by the drinking water network of the Grenoble metropolitan area, but belong to the neighboring territory of the community of municipalities of Grésivaudan.
Until then, the metropolis of Grenoble, which directly manages its drinking water network, supplied 23,000 m3 per day, or 8.4 million m3/year. But under a purchase agreement signed in October 2021, this flow should rise to 29,000 m3/day by the end of 2023, “allowing to take into account the evolution of needs for the coming years, in particular those of industries of the territory”, underlines a deliberation of the community of communes of Grésivaudan.
In 2021, according to STMicroelectronics’ environmental statement, 4.23 million m3 had been withdrawn by the plant, with almost all of this volume then discharged into surrounding waterways. In 2019, this volume withdrawn was 3.46 million m3.