“Mégabassins”: autopsy of “megadisinformation”
While 7 to 000 "anti-basin" activists are preparing to demonstrate again, from this Friday and until Sunday, in Deux-Sèvres, on two sites - Sainte-Soline and Mauzé-sur -le-Mignon – become emblematic of the fight against these vast reservoirs intended to store water for agricultural use during the winter, their neighbors in the south of the Vendée are razing the walls. In their department, sitting on the same Marais poitevin and bordering Deux-Sèvres, twenty-five "mega-basins" were built between 10 and 000... without this raising any protests, and with unanimously welcomed results: “The positive effect on groundwater is undeniable”, confides to Point Yves Le Quellec, president of the local office of France nature environment (FNE), who has followed the works since the first day. “I was reluctant myself at first… Looking back, I have to admit that I was wrong,” he says.
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The "mega basins" would therefore hover death? “What is amazing, it is the speed with which any rational debate on water reservoirs has become impossible”, hallucinates a hydrologist having worked on several local projects, insisting that his anonymity be preserved. “I'm just a simple field hydrogeologist…I don't want any trouble. Like him, the farmers – some of whom filed a complaint in mid-March for “moral harassment” – recount months of insults, intimidation, media pressure designating them in the eyes of the general public as quasi-criminals. "None of us has the profile of agribusiness", tell La Nouvelle République Ludovic Vassaux and Guillaume Raynaud, who raise market gardening cows in organic farming. And yet ransacked, like the others. The hydrologists specializing in the region, fearing the attacks, wallow in silence – leaving the field open to a handful of militants, who squat the television sets. "The discourse of the radicals has become dominant, because it has one thing in common with the moderate eco-naturalist and anti-capitalist movements: degrowth", deciphers Olivier Vial. "This movement is also carried by a galaxy of academics who have long been engaged in a current of deconstruction and questioning of Western values", who have been carrying it for years.
“Many hydrologists interviewed in the media recognize, in their writings, the interest of substitution reservoirs, but fear, in public, that their construction will delay reflection on transition and sobriety. They encounter an anti-technological progress and anti-innovation movement that is very present in public opinion,” he summarizes.
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What does science say?
On the technical level, however, the arguments put forward lack precision. Would the basins artificialize the soil? In Deux-Sèvres, they will only represent 0,74% of the area of land concerned by irrigation, calculated Stéphane V., associate teacher in life and earth sciences, and author of the blog Terre à Terre. Up to “30% of the water” in the basins could be evaporated? "It's greatly overestimated," said a hydrologist at Bureau of Geological and Mining Research (BRGM), which rather assesses evaporation “between 3% and 6%”, based on reservoirs in operation abroad. (…) This debate is turning into a farce, we mistreat and exploit science”, chokes a local hydrologist, fearful – he too! -, if he speaks publicly, professional reprisals.
We can debate it, it will always be better than the anarleftist rioters against the blues decerebrated by Macron.
I see that guys from FNE are starting to find it good... FNE is usually not the most open to that.
As for the BRGM, it gives an opinion on the evaporation which seems contained.