While the administration had recently backed, in Tarahoi, the Ekopol project at Taravao, Enviropol announces its withdrawal, not seeing how to bring to life the waste valorization complex with so much local opposition. The subsidiary of the TSP group insists the project will go ahead, but on another site, one that must now be found. Difficult since Taivini Teai himself had said he had not identified an alternative solution. Like the minister, Enviropol continues to deem its project urgent, to propose a treatment solution for lithium batteries, at the origin of the fire at the CRT, or for wrecks that threaten several lagoons.
The wreck Anne Bonny was hauled out of the water on Thursday and dismantled on the Tatutu quay in Papeari. Our colleagues at Tahiti Infos had reported on this sailboat that had sunk in the Bay of Phæton and the autonomous port’s emergency intervention to refloat and dismantle it. Enviropol intervened, “in accordance with best practices” but regretting to work under these conditions: “it was precisely to treat this kind of wrecks” that the Ekopol project had been designed, laments Benoît Sylvestre, general director of Enviropol. A project that will not be done on the peninsula, the company renounces to carry it out on the land of Vaitaare, at the western entrance of Taravao.
The oppositions from a citizen collective and the tavanas on site have defeated Enviropol’s ambitions. Sabrina Birk, spokesperson for the Te Aua’a ia ora bay preservation collective, Willy Chung Sao, mayor of Taiarapu-Est and Faana Taputu, mayor of Taiarapu-Ouest and president of the Terehēamanu intercommunal community, had denounced a second major waste treatment project while Taravao’s entrance already hosts the Paihoro CET: “Our Te Aua’a Bay is not a garbage can”, read on placards at a public meeting at the end of June. In a session at the assembly in late September, Environment Minister Taivini Teai continued to support the project, while noting he did not want to push it through by force but explaining that relocating the project to Nivee, as suggested by Ekopol opponents in Taravao, was “impossible”: “Nivee does not have direct port access and presents a constraining topography”, he stated.
“Taiarapu-Est wants to reclaim the land area that had been dedicated to Ekopol”
But on Enviropol’s side, they no longer see how to push a project through with so much opposition, especially since the town hall has had a long-standing plan on these same plots: a cemetery and a memorial path with Tahitian tiaré flowers and taro fields below. “We had a clear refusal from the citizen collective and from the municipality. Very concretely, Taiarapu-Est wants to reclaim the land area that had been dedicated to Ekopol, so it seems we are moving toward a Plan B to find another land plot on Tahiti and settle elsewhere. It should be noted that the building permit and ICPE dossiers had already been filed. So we will have to restart all the studies from scratch and find a new land plot. I currently have no idea where we could settle within acceptable timelines.”
Benoît Sylvestre explains that the company will have to “remobilize”. About a “forty” million francs have been spent on studies, time spent working on the building permit and the ICPE files. “We will reinject money but it weighs on the accounts. Financially it’s hard and morally it’s discouraging for everyone.”
“The project will come to fruition. It is by no means abandoned.”
From now on, Enviropol will study “all possible paths”, discuss with the government which may “perhaps” offer other landowners to propose, or why not “buy land”. But finding land that meets all the necessary conditions for this waste-processing hub will be difficult. The Environment Minister himself had said he did not see other solutions than this installation on the peninsula for Ekopol, so as to pool waste transport with the CET and stay close to the sea for the ship-dismantling sector. Despite these difficulties, the waste-processing company is not giving up: “The project will come to fruition. It is by no means abandoned.” Furthermore, for the general director, it is time to propose a treatment solution for several wastes, notably lithium batteries, for the risk of fires at the CRT and the CET to multiply and for “the waste-processing facilities to go up in smoke.”
Enviropol, which is preparing its arguments again, also understands that such a project could worry local residents: talk had circulated about 16,000 tonnes of waste to be treated per year, including ships, tires, glass, electrical and electronic waste, refrigerant gas… A whole hub of activity even though “no waste was meant to stay on site”, recalls Benoît Sylvestre.
