While some 2,000 people are expected at this demonstration and weekend activities, including concerts and a race of "cars" going "as slowly as possible", elected officials opposed to the project denounced Friday its "total contradiction with the climate emergency".
"There is still a chance to stop (the site), even if it is thin," said Gilbert Hébrard, former mayor of this commune of Haute-Garonne, on the edge of the Tarn, where opponents have for several weeks erected tents in plane trees to prevent the felling.
"This project has become emblematic of the climate fight," added Sabine Mousson, mayor of Teulat, a Tarn commune that would be, she said, "cut in two" by the future highway.
Disappearance of agricultural land
Also present at this press conference, elected officials pointed to the disappearance of agricultural land or the risk of a greater concentration of population in the Toulouse metropolis.
Antoine Maurice, head of the EELV list narrowly defeated in the municipal elections in Toulouse in 2020, has proposed to strengthen the Toulouse-Castres rail link, with a train every hour instead of a dozen per day currently.
But other elected officials of the Tarn, of all political stripes, support the motorway, which would reduce by about twenty minutes the journey Castres-Toulouse in 2025 -- a duration of a little more than an hour today.
Atosca, private concessionaire of the A69, describes its project as "exemplary" in terms of respect for the environment or job creation. Regarding agricultural land, the planned footprint has been reduced from 380 to 300 hectares, according to its managing director Martial Gerlinger.
At the exit of Vendine, center of the protest until recent days, dozens of posters against the A69, and rather defending a development of the existing national road, are still stuck on threatened trees.
Thomas Brail, founder of the National Group for Tree Monitoring (GNSA), hangs on a plane tree a tweet from Elisabeth Borne from 2020 hailing her "sincere and fair fight for the defense of trees" at the entrance to the village of Vendine, on April 10, 2023 in Haute-Garonne © Valentine CHAPUIS / AFP / Archives
But on Saturday, opponents will gather in Saïx, some 37 km away, in the Tarn.
Several hundred activists (some 400, according to the prefect) from various regions, including Nouvelle-Aquitaine or Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur, set up Friday two tents and tents, set up tables, a bar and a canteen on a surface equivalent to a dozen football fields.
Less than a month after clashes between gendarmes and demonstrators against the "megabasins" in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres), the authorities are closely following this mobilization.
The prefect of Tarn, François-Xavier Lauch, said Friday night that the 800 gendarmes and police mobilized will remain in the background if the demonstration is "peaceful".
No "absolute desire for violence"
The Ministry of Transport said that Clément Beaune had requested in January a review of seven motorway projects, "in view of the current challenges: fight against the artificialization of soils, reduction of CO2 emissions, but also opening up territories".
"The A69 project is no exception to this review process," adds the ministry, while qualifying because of its state of progress: "the work has begun, and a contract committing the State has been signed with the concessionaire".
On Friday morning, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had warned that "we can debate, but not fight", adding, however, that there is "no intelligence that demonstrates that in the Tarn people have an absolute desire for violence".
Statements below the remarks he had made on April 5, classifying the A69 among 42 projects "likely to give rise to extremely violent protests".
The camp of opponents of the Toulouse-Castres motorway at the entrance to the village of Vendine, on April 10, 2023 in Haute-Garonne © Valentine CHAPUIS / AFP / Archives
Opponents had accused him of "setting fire to the powder", in a region where the memory of Rémi Fraisse remains very present.
On October 26, 2014, the body of this 21-year-old environmental activist was found on the site of the Sivens dam (Tarn), about sixty kilometers from Saïx, after clashes of opponents with the police.
Five months later, the project was abandoned in favor of a water reservoir reduced by half, and the government evacuated the site occupied for sixteen months by "zadistes".
© 2023 AFP