On February 16, the city of Grenoble filed an appeal before the administrative court against the State to request the cancellation and reformulation of the atmosphere protection plan (PPA) of the Isère prefecture, an approach which she made public on Thursday 23 February. The municipality, led by the ecologist mayor Eric Piolle (Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, EELV), believes that this regulatory plan, provided for by the environmental code, is not enough to protect the health of the population.
The legal remedy points in particular “insufficient goals”pollution thresholds “badly estimated”a deficiency in the action plan on ozone, as much “irregularities” which would contravene the article of the environmental code governing PPAs, resulting from the European directive on air quality of 2008. After two years of administrative development and a public inquiry, the Isère plan was was presented in December 2022 by the prefecture.
Established for the period 2022-2027, it concerns 850,000 inhabitants of 297 municipalities around the Alpine capital. It provides for thirty-two actions to reduce air pollution, by acting on several areas of activity, including industry, agriculture, transport and town planning. The plan proposes, for example, to monitor twenty-three industrial establishments, to encourage them to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases or fine particles. It is also a question of promoting good practices on public works sites.
While the improper use of wood heating, particularly with open hearths, accounts for 67% of the emission of fine particles, the PPA wants to enable the replacement of more than 7,000 wood-burning appliances in five years, through measures incentives, without deciding on bans, such as those in place in the very polluted Arve valley, in Haute-Savoie.
“Guilty inaction”
The city council of Grenoble had voted a negative opinion, considering that the means were not sufficient to achieve the objectives of reducing greenhouse gas emissions or fine particles, in accordance with the thresholds yet defined by the international agreements of Paris. in 2015, or set by the World Health Organization (WHO).
In its purely advisory opinion, the environmentalist majority proposed the modification of the mobility payment for employers, to lower the VAT on transport for the train and the bicycle, or to impose the obligation to make wood-burning heating appliances compliant. with every real estate transaction. By insisting on the fact that the reduction of air pollution could generate positive social effects on disadvantaged populations, often the most exposed, and beneficial economic repercussions.
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