REPORTAGE
The fire of Lubrizol in September 2019 has left its mark, far beyond Rouen. In Jonage, a small town near Lyon, the residents and the mayor are standing up against the installation of the chemical metal processing plant, Chimimeca, next to their home. However, a building permit had been validated last April. "We are clearly worried. This is a factory that uses hydrofluoric acid. So we are going to have gas emissions in the atmosphere. The first house is 150 meters away. The first housing estates are 500 meters away and the school at 850 meters. For us it is really too close to people, "explains Europe 1 Sébastien Meunier of the association" Agir pour l'environnement ", fiercely opposed to the establishment of Chimimeca.
A 1,500 m² plot, located in the city's activity zone, was however ready to welcome the factory last April. The building permit had been granted long before the Lubrizol disaster. But the situation changed in the space of a few days.
"Chimimeca can no longer settle in Jonage"
Initially, the city's mayor, Lucien Barge, was not hostile to the project, but he eventually changed his mind and revoked the building permit for the factory: "The result of the public inquiry n was not the one we were expecting. So I considered that we had not been told everything when we learned about the license, and in October I issued a license withdrawal order. , Chimimeca can no longer settle in Jonage ".
For its part, the factory does not want to stop there. The company has taken legal action so that its project can be carried out on the initial site, while the metropolitan area of Lyon has just offered it land more suited to Feyzin in the chemical corridor, alongside other sites classified as Seveso. .