French villagers at war over ‘assault’ on Roman aqueduct from planned Amazon centre
PLANS for a massive Amazon sorting centre within sight of France’s Pont du Gard are an “assault” on the Romans’ finest aqueduct, opponents insist.
It comes amid a row over whether the US e-commerce giant’s facility is an unwanted eyesore in a relatively untouched area or an economic gift horse in a region in desperate need of jobs.
The 2,000-year-old Pont du Gard rises 160ft and spans 1,500ft of the Gardon valley in southern France. It is the highest of all Roman aqueduct bridges, and one of the best preserved. The structure, near Nimes, is also a Unesco world treasure, and attracts around 1.25million visits a year.
Some 20,000 people have signed a petition calling for local authorities to halt the construction of the “immense” 430,500-sq-ft centre on current Côte- du-rhône vineyards belonging to the village of Fournès. Petitioners say it “will be the first and the last image that millions of visitors to the Pont du Gard and the region will see”.
“The proposal to undertake such a major industrial project adjacent to this exceptional site would represent an irreversible assault on the heritage of the Gard, the Occitania region and France,” claim local environment and heritage defence groups Adere and Prima Vera. The expected 500 lorries and 3,000 vehicles which will transport goods from the site will create “pollution, road congestion, and an explosion of CO2 emissions,” they argue.
The project has split local villages between those for and against it. Claude Martinet, mayor of nearby Montfrin told Le Nouvel Obs newspaper “This project is indispensable. It will create jobs. If we stop them from coming, they’ll go elsewhere.” At 13 per cent, the local unemployment rate is well above the national average.
Detractors counter that since promising 600 jobs, the figure has dropped to 150, and could reduce further due to “robotisation”. They cite Mounir Mahjoubi, the former French digital minister, who said that for every job Amazon creates in France, it destroys 2.2 others in traditional commerce.