Notre-Dame-des-Landes 2

A few days ago, I wrote that, as of that point, I'd only seen one article providing background and perspective on the conflict over the proposed Nantes airport at near-by Notre-Dame-des-Landes.  Now I've found a second.  Along with one in Le Figaro that I linked to in the earlier post, there’s now piece in this week’s Nouvel Observateur that does a good job of summarizing the conflict.  Unfortunately, the magazine hasn’t yet included it on its open-access web site so I can’t link to it.

So to summarize, proponents argue that the new airport is needed to replace the existing Nantes-Atlantique Airport, which they maintain will reach its limit of four million annual passengers in another six years.  The single runway, they say, is insufficient.  They also want an airport large enough to handle international flights, which could help to open up the region to international development.

Opponents counter that the existing airport, if managed correctly, could actually handle many more than four million passengers a year.  They point to the airport serving Beauvais (northwest of Paris) that handles nearly 10 million passengers a year on a single runway.

The article describes prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault’s efforts to find a basis for compromise.  But at this point, the article suggests, it’s difficult to see what that might be.  Local authorities want to build some kind of airport on the new site.  Opponents insist that the existing airport can be made to serve for years to come.

The article suggest a larger issue may be driving opposition to the Notre-Dame-des-Landes:

“A tort ou à raison, l’aéroport est devenu en 2012 l’étendard national d’une puisante jacquerie contre l’artificialisation des terres qui fait perdre tous les huit ans l’équivalent d’un départment en terres cultivables.”  [“For better or worse, the airport has become in 2012 the symbol of a powerful revolt against forces consuming open land that every eight years eat up the equivalent of the average-sized department.”]

In 1989, a fight over constructing a dam on the Loire River in the department of the Haute-Loire took five years to resolve.  Some of the people at Notre-Dame-des-Landes took part in that fight.  This one could also go on for a while.