“We intervene in the first stage of a project by acquiring the land or site concerned and restoring it to its original state”explains Catherine Bardy, general director of the Public Land Establishment (EPF) of Hauts-de-France. This may involve deconstructing buildings or removing concentrated pollution (old chemical tanks, stocks of polluting products, etc.).
The EPF covers 80% of the rehabilitation costs on land projects relating to economic development. This makes it possible to reduce the cost of operations for communities, which carry out the vast majority of these operations, on their own behalf or to facilitate the establishment or development of a private economic actor.
Risk sharing
The Hauts-de-France EPF, created in 1990 initially on the perimeter of Nord and Pas-de-Calais, now also operates on the Somme. A region which experienced a strong movement of deindustrialization in the 1980s, “We intervened a lot, at the beginning, on large industrial wastelandsrecalls Catherine Bardy. We have acquired skills in deconstruction operations on complex industrial sites and in pollution issues.”
The EPF still carries out operations over large areas, such as the Envision battery gigafactory in Douai, covering 140 hectares. In the North, the EPF also participated in the transformation operations of the former Redoute headquarters, Blanchemaille, in Roubaix, which became a business incubator, or one of the Arques glassworks.
According to its general director, the EPF des Hauts-de-France was “one of the first to be interested in the transitional occupation of sites, for example through the establishment of urban cultures, or the transformation of former industrial sites into natural spaces. We were also among the first to never intervene in the acquisition of land in extension of the urban fabric, because there was already a lot of wasteland here.”
