The correctional court of Grenoble reopened Monday the debates in the file of the dairy L'Étoile du Vercors, property of the group Lactalis, and returned the file to March 11 next.
A longer period to comply with the law. This decision follows a judgment of the Administrative Court dated December 28, 2018. It cancels a 2016 prefectural decree giving the Etoile du Vercors company notice to comply with the regulations concerning the treatment of its effluents within a certain time period. six months. The administrative courts finally allow the company a further nine months, starting from the December judgment.
The cheese factory suspected to pollute the Isere for years. Located in Saint-Just-de-Claix, in Isère, the cheese factory is prosecuted before the criminal court, with its former and current leaders, for "throwing or abandoning waste in the surface water" and "exploitation of a harmful installation water or aquatic environment not in accordance with a formal notice ", as well as for the contravention of" operation of a classified installation without respecting the measures prescribed by decree for the protection of the environment ". It is the Frapna (Rhône-Alpes Federation of Nature Protection) which, first, had seized justice in 2017.
The equivalent of wastewater from a city of 8,000 to 10,000 inhabitants. L'Étoile du Vercors, created in 1942 and bought by Lactalis in 2011, says transforming between 46,000 and 58,000 liters of milk per day on average, up to 100,000 liters during peak periods. It employs 147 people and works with 70 milk producers. A company that manufactures, matures and sells cheese (Saint-Marcellin, Saint-Félicien, goat cheese), it has since its creation rejected its untreated industrial wastewater directly in the Isère. This represents the equivalent of the wastewater of a city of 8.000 to 10.000 inhabitants daily, but in "very fat" according to Sylvain Traynard, DDT Isère (Departmental Direction of the territories), and with "products of disinfection".
In 2000, the company asked for its connection to the treatment plant of the community of communes under construction, before wishing in 2014 to build its own station. What it had refused him four times. A position "incomprehensible and inadmissible", according to Lactalis.