Environmental and residents' action groups on Tuesday hailed a decision to charge the steel group ArcelorMittal with pumping toxic fumes into the atmosphere in south-eastern France and attempting to cover up its tracks.
Campaigners have been battling with the company for nearly a decade over the emissions from theArcelorMittal plant in the industrial port zone of Fos-sur-Mer some 40km north-west of Marseille.
They say emissions contained benzene, lead and cadmium - all classified as carcinogens and mutagens. They claim the plumes of smoke from the plant also contained toxic agents such as nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide.
Following a report published by the investigative website Mediapart, the Marseille public prosecutor Nicolas Bessone told the French news agency AFP that ArcelorMittal faced charges of endangering the lives of others as well as forgery and use of forgeries. ArcelorMittal, which has been placed under judicial supervision, denies the charges.
"We welcome this good news," Julie Andreu, a lawyer for the campaign group, told AFP.
"I'm satisfied that the courts have done their job and got to the bottom of it," aded Daniel Moutet, president of the Association for the Defence and Protection of the Coastline of the Gulf of Fos (ADPLGF), which was behind the collective complaint filed in 2018.
In statements sent to AFP and Reuters, ArcelorMittal said it would cooperate fully with the authorities. "The company has done everything possible to ensure that emissions from the Fos-sur-Mer site comply with the prescribed annual limit values," the statement added. "There has been no falsification of data."
ArcelorMittal has invested more than 735 million euros since 2014 to modernise its facilities in order to reduce emission levels.
"These actions have enabled the company to reduce atmospheric emissions at this site by 70 percent compared with 2002," the company statement added.
After operating two blast furnaces at Fos, Arcelor, which in 2005 took over a steelworks dating back to 1974, shut down one of its blast furnaces in 2023, citing a fall in steel consumption.
According to a recent ArcelorMittal document, the site, which has a production capacity of more than 4 million tonnes of steel per year, produces between 2 and 3.5 Mt/year depending on market needs.
Its direct CO2 emissions have averaged 5.6 Mt/year over the last five years.
ArcelorMittal Méditerranée employs around 2,400 people and 1,100 subcontractors at Fos-sur-Mer, where it is the main employer.
(With news wires)
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