The biogas plant of Châteaulin (Finistère), operated by the Engie group, will appear in March before the correctional court of Quimper for the pollution of a river that had deprived 180,000 people of drinking water in August 2020.
“The company Centrale Biogaz de Kastellin is convened before the correctional court of Quimper at the hearing of March 9, 2023″, confirmed to AFP the prosecutor of Quimper Carine Halley.
Inaugurated in 2018 by Sébastien Lecornu, then Secretary of State for Ecological Transition, this plant injects methane produced from manure, slurry or waste from the agri-food industry into the gas network.
The company, a subsidiary of Engie, will be tried for the offences of “dumping harmful substances into groundwater, surface water or the sea” and “pollution by discharge into freshwater or fish farming of substances harmful to fish”, the magistrate said.
He is also accused of the contraventional offence of “operating a classified installation without respecting the measures prescribed by order for the protection of the environment”.
The maximum penalty for these offenses is a fine of 375,000 euros as well as various prohibition or confiscation penalties, in addition to the penalty of restoration of the premises.
Questioned, the company said to the AFP “to take note of this decision” and not to wish “to make comments before the hearing”.
On August 17, 2020, a tank at the biogas plant overflowed due to a technical incident. Approximately 400 m3 of digestate, an organic material resulting from the methanization process, had overflowed from a tank into a coastal river, upstream of a drinking water plant, causing a spike in ammonia and making the water unsafe to drink.
The use of drinking water was then restricted by prefectural decree for 50 communes, affecting 180,000 people including Châteaulin, a large part of Quimper and the very touristy Crozon peninsula.
Several associations, including the CLCV and Eau et Rivières de Bretagne, had filed a complaint after this pollution.
“It is the trial of the industrial risk that our rivers are running,” Arnaud Clugery, spokesman for Eau et Rivières de Bretagne, an association that has fought for a public trial, told AFP. “Environmental justice must not be justice on the cheap,” he added.
The production of the biogas plant of Châteaulin corresponds to the gas consumption of about 6,000 people.
