VIDEO Pollution in Toulouse: “Seeing these dead fish rise to the surface of the Hers, it’s distressing”
At the end of the day on Saturday, untreated domestic wastewater was dumped into the Hers, killing many fish.
Inert on the back or the belly, we could see studs, roaches, barbel, chub, bleak… and even a beautiful carp. All were stranded in the middle of the pebbles, on the edge of the Hers, asphyxiated, following an incident, which occurred this weekend, at the wastewater lift station, located upstream from the Argoulets treatment plant.
For Stéphane, from the Union, who is used to walking his border collie on this bucolic shore, the spectacle is distressing. “Sunday, when we saw all these fish come to the surface, we called the gendarmerie, then the firefighters,” he explains.
A fisherman accustomed to this area, Stéphane even says he is “disgusted to see all these corpses. Since the day before, many have been washed away by the current. Now, for the river to go back to how it was before, it will take time, ”he adds. Until further notice, he will ensure that his dog no longer bathes in the Hers. “But we hope that something will be done because we can no longer take this repeated pollution. », He slips. “A priori, wastewater would have flowed into the Hers until Monday morning,” said Philippe Baumlin, security assistant, at the Union town hall. On call this weekend, he spent the evening of Sunday, on the banks of the Hers with the firefighters and the gendarmes. “Now it’s going to have to clean up, because this will start to smell bad and flag pests,” continues the.
Electrical malfunction
Loïc Depoutre, Plant Manager at Toulouse Métropole in the sanitation service looks back on what really happened this weekend. “At the end of the day on Saturday, we had electrical operation on this recovery installation which shut it down. The time that the teams use, the wastewater and therefore untreated, since it had not yet arrived at the treatment plant, flowed into the Hers. »This caused temporary pollution of the river. “Sunday at the end of the day, the post was restored,” says the technician. But in the meantime, water contaminated by domestic uses (and therefore loaded with carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus) … have changed the quality of the river water “significantly and fish life, killing fish for lack of water. oxygen. “
Since this incident, Loïc Depoutre’s teams have been in contact with the French biodiversity office and the fishing federation. “Soon, the banks will be cleaned and analyzes will begin to assess the impact and take accompanying measures if necessary”, concludes Loïc Depoutre.