Thirty thousand signatures in less than a week. The petition against atmospheric pollution due to maritime transport launched by the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan (Marseille Spring), found its target in the middle of summer. Not surprising. The city just lived eight days of“level 2 alert” ozone pollution and the introduction, for the second time in its history only, of differentiated traffic banning the city center from the most polluting motor vehicles. A measure lifted by the prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône, Sunday July 24 at 8 p.m.
“The Marseillais are suffocating”, observes Benoît Payan from his office in the Palais du Pharo, whose windows overlook the industrial port, managed by the State, and, in the distance, the imposing cruise ships in stopover, the main targets of his vindictiveness. “Pollution levels are no longer acceptable. A community serves to act, but also to make people react. It’s a health issue that I’m putting out there so people who live here understand what’s going on.” insists the mayor, already at the origin, in February 2022, of a forum published by The world bringing together twenty-five mayors from around the Mediterranean demanding the establishment of an area for the regulation of pollutant emissions (ECA).
In his petition, Mr. Payan asks for several measures: the prohibition by prefectural decree of the stopovers of polluting boats in his city during the peaks of pollution, more generally, the acceleration of the creation of the zone of reduction of sulfur emissions (SECA) in the Mediterranean, and especially the establishment of an ECA zone, limiting pollution to nitrogen oxides and fine particles. It also proposes to the State to better control the ships which enter the harbor of Marseilles to ensure that they use fuels with a rate of 0.1% sulfur. “I would not like to see that some benefit from derogations”, he slips.
A “clumsy wording”
In Marseille, the pollution generated by cruise ships crystallizes opposition. While activity is reborn after the Covid-19 parenthesis, with 530 stopovers and nearly one and a half million passengers expected in 2022, according to the Cruise Club, many residents’ associations denounce the fumes which suffocate their neighborhoods. On June 14, the Stop Croisières collective, with a simple armada of kayaks, blocked the arrival of the Wonder of the Seas and its 9,000 passengers. In addition to the support of his majority, in the forefront of which the elected environmentalists, Benoît Payan’s initiative receives the support of the three new deputies of the Nupes of the city, including Manuel Bompard (LFI), who recall that “2,500 premature deaths per year are due to air pollution in Marseille”.
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