Toulouse: an aborted real estate project and pollution control costing more than € 4.5 million
Everything was updated in 2005 during earthworks to create a large subdivision. A waste for the investor and the municipality, and an enduring lack of security for the site.
In 1972, the Société Nationale des Poudres et Explosifs (SNPE) bought this land of nearly 50 hectares, until then the property of the Ministry of the Interior, located in the town of Fauga on which it stored until 1994 explosives and ammunition of its manufacture: artillery and hunting powder and phenol drums.
No longer having the usefulness of the place, the SNPE considered selling this disused land and approached the municipality of Fauga to make it constructible and allow an urban development operation. In 2003, a specific concerted development zone (ZAC) was created by modifying the land use plan (POS). On December 15, 2003, Snc Labourdette, an offshoot of Eiffage Immobilier Sud, acquired the land from SNPE for a price of € 1,341,551.35 excluding tax, of which € 426,857.25 payable in cash, the balance of € 914,694.10 on a period of three years. The land sold, which has become constructible, was intended for the realization of a program of 164 lots of building land, comprising grouped individual houses and a residence for the elderly at a cost of € 2,256,965.71.
It undertook the realization of infrastructure works and the municipality built a wastewater treatment plant with the financial participation of this company. In March 2005, during the completion of network development work, ammunition was discovered in the ground, revealing a situation of insecurity which led the municipal and prefectural authorities to suspend the work pending a precise diagnosis of the land.
Expert reports drawn up at the end of 2005, and in 2010, on the history and diagnosis on the entire site revealed considerable pyrotechnic pollution, the cost of which was estimated at the time between 2.5M € and 4, 5 M €, and for a period of 18 months to two years.
Since that date, Snc De Labourdette has not been able to resume its real estate project and the development of the ZAC has been stopped short. Faced with the judicial and administrative saga between the State and the Snc Labourdette which has lasted since 2005, the three successive mayors of Fauga will have been only passive witnesses. All the more bitter as this natural area of 50 hectares, if it were cleaned up, could offer good prospects to this town.