Environmental mobilization against a gravel pit in Ariège, damage

At the call of the Extinction Rebellion organization and local collectives, the action took place in the afternoon in the town of Vernet, not far from Foix, in Ariège.

“Nurturing lands, neither gravel pit, nor deadly highway”, could we read on a banner brandished by demonstrators, dressed in white overalls, their faces masked.

Gravel pits are quarries in which water tables are often exposed and where small pieces of rock used in materials in the construction sector are extracted.

Participants in Saturday's mobilization denounce the concreteization, the artificialization of soils to the detriment of agricultural land and also oppose the A69 Castres-Toulouse motorway, currently being built in the Tarn department, a site strongly contested by the ecologists.

“No gravel, no bitumen plant. No bitumen, no asphalt (tar). No asphalt, no highway,” highlighted the activists present on Saturday at Le Vernet.

At the end of the action on the gravel pit site, while the procession of demonstrators headed towards the village of Bonnac where a festive evening was planned, they were stopped momentarily by the gendarmes, before continuing on their way.

On Thursday, the demonstration was banned by the Ariège prefecture, stressing that it had not been the subject of a declaration by the organizers and took place "in a regional and national context where multiple undeclared gatherings targeting industrial and private installations have caused disturbances to public order and tranquility.”

In Ariège, the Stop Gravières collective and other environmental movements are opposed to the Regional Quarry Scheme (SRC), believing that it will intensify the destruction of agricultural land, pollution and affect the department's water tables.

Companies in the sector are putting this danger into perspective.

During the summer of 2023, a demonstration had already brought together a few hundred people at the Vernet gravel pit.

Next weekend (June 7-9), another mobilization is planned on the route of the A69 motorway, notably at the call of the Earth Uprisings.