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Jerome Cavaretta
Published on
September 27, 2024 at 5:40 p.m.
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“The Prime Minister is in the process of forming his government, he should think about creating a Ministry of Injustice! » In the early morning of this Friday, September 20, Franck, Dominique and Jean-François scrutinize, still in disbelief, the wild dump which spreads as far as the eye can see. “Sweet madness”. The consequence of the illegal occupation of around forty Roma families between June and October 2023 in Osny (Val-d’Oise).
2 million euros
Dislodged from their makeshift camp by the police, they left behind them a mountain of waste, formed at the rhythm of a well-established traffic with an intangible scenario: for construction companies, it consists of calling on the Roma in order to to get rid of their waste at a lower cost. A modus operandi identical to that which prevailed at the birth of the Linandes plain landfill, in Cergy.
Tires, paint tins, rubble of all kinds, advertising brochure for a Parisian performance hall, remains of a dental office, mattresses… An XXL trash can has taken root on these former agricultural lands nestled in the Fond de Chars district, on the edge of the D 915. Land where nothing has been cultivated since the 1950s and the irruption into the landscape of a high voltage line which dominates this no man’s land crossed by the Montgeroult path. Plots today owned by around fifteen owners.
Worthless land that they thought was safe from covetousness until the Osny town hall called them to account. In March, she sent them “implementation of the adversarial procedure before formal notice”. Translation: the municipality urges owners to proceed immediately with the evacuation of waste. In the event of refusal, they will be subject to a fine of 150,000 euros and “a daily penalty equal to at most 1,500 euros”.
“We are ordered to pay for cleaning the land, even though in this case we are not guilty, but innocent. »
Amount of the invoice, according to an estimate established by a specialized company: 2 million euros! Complaints filed, letters to the Ministries of Ecological Transition, Justice, Interior, the prosecutor, elected officials… The handful of owners knocked on every door to plead their good faith. So far in vain.
“We are not guilty”
And the town hall may claim to be working on a solution (read framed), they are hardly reassured, aware that the ax could, at any moment, fall. “I don’t see how we’re going to get out of this. This story can ruin our life, a working life. Financially, we cannot pay and, even if we could, in principle, we do not agree! What should we do? Sell our houses? Make our children suffer the consequences by leaving them in debt? We refuse to pay for a crime that we did not commit. We have been trying to get rid of this land for years without succeeding. For us, it’s a burden…”
The position of the town hall
The “situation is more complex than it seems”, immediately indicates the municipality of Osny. Stressing that the procedure it has initiated against the owners, “sometimes little concerned about their land”, is “likely to lead to various measures, some of which are indeed of a financial nature, with the exclusive aim of enforcing the regulations in terms of waste and, with it, to avoid environmental or health risks”, the municipality specifies that it “nevertheless supports private owners, who have been received at the town hall, have grouped together in a collective and are also now assisted by an environmental law lawyer.
And to continue: “Together, the municipality and the owners seek to co-construct a global solution enabling the effective cleaning of the land, while respecting environmental issues and without ignoring the financial constraints that this may represent for individuals. As such, the municipality is calling on other administrations as well as private operators with the aim that a project around renewable energies (a photovoltaic farm is mentioned, editor’s note) can see the light of day in this sector.
Finally, the municipality “recalls, however, that the right to property also confers obligations on its holder and that it cannot automatically replace potentially defaulting owners by imposing additional expenses on municipal finances and therefore on those administered. .”
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