Après avoir rejeté des millions de tonnes de "boues rouge" toxiques, l'usine Alteo de Gardanne (Bouches-du-Rhône), leader mondial de l'alumine de spécialité, aurait continué à polluer le Parc national des Calanques avec ses rejets liquides, des faits lui valant désormais une mise en examen.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 After having rejected millions of tonnes of "toxic red mud",
00:03 the Alteo plant in Gardane,
00:05 Bouches-du-Rhône,
00:06 world leader in specialised aluminium,
00:08 would have continued to pollute the Calanques National Park
00:11 with its liquid waste,
00:13 facts now worth a thorough examination.
00:15 Four years after the opening of a judicial report
00:19 for "endangering the life of others",
00:21 the Marseille Parquet estimated that enough elements
00:24 had been testing the arguments advanced for years
00:26 by the Riverains and Ecologists Association,
00:28 which denounced the pollution caused by the company.
00:31 The plant continued to dump its waste
00:34 without respecting the limits of emissions assigned,
00:37 and indicated to the AFP the Marseille Parquet,
00:40 confirming this examination,
00:42 on 17 October,
00:44 which was revealed by Le Quotidien Le Monde on Friday.
00:46 Alteo is suspected of having, in Gardane and Cassis,
00:49 between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2021,
00:53 let its waters flow into the sea,
00:55 within the territorial sea limit,
00:57 directly or indirectly,
00:59 one or more substances whose action or reactions
01:01 have even temporarily caused harmful effects on health
01:04 or damage to the flora or fauna,
01:07 said the Marseille prosecutor, Nicolas Besson.
01:10 Several prefectural arrests authorising the company
01:14 to temporarily drop off at the toxicity threshold
01:16 for its liquid waste at sea
01:17 had however been made in 2015,
01:20 2016,
01:21 2018 and 2020,
01:22 notably to save several hundred jobs.
01:26 Despite the fact that this right to pollute Alteo
01:28 would not have been included in the clauses,
01:29 these waste flows in the Mediterranean
01:31 would still present concentration rates
01:33 too high on one or more parameters
01:35 aimed at arresting them,
01:37 among which heavy metals such as mercury,
01:39 zinc,
01:40 lithium,
01:41 copper or arsenic.
01:43 According to Le Monde,
01:45 these excesses would have in particular concerned
01:47 mercury and arsenic,
01:48 with a total of 64 violations
01:50 observed between 2016 and 2021.
01:53 In 2020,
01:54 the company was congratulated on having achieved
01:57 its water quality objectives
01:59 by the end of August 30, 2020,
02:01 in line with the prefectural arrest.
02:03 Environmental scandal
02:06 Under the pressure of environmentalists
02:08 and following a prefectural arrest in late 2015,
02:12 the plant had already had to stop
02:13 dropping off its solid bulk of bauxite,
02:16 the raw material of aluminum,
02:18 nicknamed "red mud".
02:19 In 50 years,
02:21 the plant had rejected at least 20 million tonnes
02:23 loaded with arsenic and cadmium.
02:25 Since then,
02:27 Alteo has only rejected a liquid waste flow,
02:29 at the origin of this examination.
02:31 The solid waste was stored in a planter
02:34 in Bouc-Bélaire,
02:35 near Gardanne.
02:37 But nearly a dozen plaintiffs,
02:39 including the mayor of Gardanne,
02:41 environmental associations
02:43 and the plant's bankers,
02:44 had filed a complaint in 2018
02:46 for "endangering others",
02:48 evoking a health and environmental scandal.
02:51 Their wish?
02:52 To stop Alteo's rejections
02:55 and to sentence it for past pollution.
02:57 Alteo took action to examine the plant.
03:00 Since its purchase in 2021,
03:03 the plant has undergone a major industrial transformation,
03:06 with the plant's refining stopped.
03:09 In addition,
03:10 we are actively pursuing our efforts
03:12 to reduce our environmental footprint,
03:15 according to the AFP's new president,
03:18 Alain Moscatello.
03:19 We have inherited a passive
03:22 and we are striving to do better,
03:23 to do well,
03:24 he added.
03:25 After having long belonged
03:28 to the French group Pechiné until 2003,
03:30 Alteo has regularly changed owners since,
03:33 bought by the giant Australian mini Anglo Rio Tinto
03:36 then by the American investment fund HIG in 2012,
03:40 it has belonged since 2021,
03:42 after its placement in judicial re-election
03:44 due to a drop in orders
03:45 and a crisis in the world aluminum market,
03:48 to the group of Logistics United Mining Supply,
03:51 UMS,
03:52 set up in Guinea.
03:52 Created in 1894,
03:56 Alteo is the oldest aluminum factory in the world.
03:58 It imports its raw materials mainly from Guinea
04:02 to manufacture white aluminum,
04:04 used in the armament,
04:05 the automotive industry
04:06 or the manufacture of mobile phones.
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