A Vienne golf course was degraded on Sunday, August 20, on the sidelines of the “Water Convoy”, a bicycle procession of opponents of “basins”, agricultural irrigation reserves. “This is an act of protest that was not planned and does not fall under the organization of the convoy”, reacted in a press release the organizers, which also include the collective Bassines Non Merci and the agricultural union Confederation. peasant. An investigation has been opened.
At midday, about forty individuals, some masked, sheared a fence and entered this golf course located in Beaumont-Saint-Cyr, 20 km northeast of Poitiers, damaging a green and a system of irrigation, authorities said. The intruders were dispersed by the gendarmes, the prefecture said in a statement. The convoy was able to leave to bivouac on Sunday evening in Coussay-Les-Bois (Vienne), about thirty kilometers from Beaumont-Saint-Cyr.
The Vienne prefecture posted on Twitter, renamed X, photos showing pieces of lawn torn off and slogans painted on the ground, such as “100 days to dry you off” or “
Participants in the convoy of the
Leaving on Friday, the “Water Convoy”, brings together several hundred demonstrators on bicycles, 500 according to the prefecture and 800 according to the organization. He must reach Orleans next Friday, then Paris the next day, to demand a moratorium on “basin” projects, five months after the violent clashes between demonstrators and police around the Sainte-Soline site.
The damage to the Beaumont-Saint-Cyr golf course was committed during the convoy’s lunch break, next to a body of water prohibited for swimming due to cyanobacteria. “A few dozen people obviously wanted to go cool off at one of the watering holes of the golf course located right next door”, argued the Uprisings of the Earth, which castigated the golf courses, “source of waste of water for a luxury sport”.
Several golf courses had already been degraded in France during the drought of summer 2022.
“Given his speed of reaction, one wonders if Marc Fesneau is Minister of Sports or Agriculture,” quipped Earth Uprisings.
“Political ecology must position itself clearly in the face of radicalism and the use of violence,” reacted Arnaud Rousseau, president of the agricultural union FNSEA, in favor of irrigation reserves.
The Sainte-Soline reserve is the second of sixteen planned in the Marais poitevin. Its promoters, 450 farmers supported by the state, defend crop insurance essential to their survival in the face of recurrent droughts. Their opponents denounce them a “leak forward” of the “productivist” agricultural model, at the time of climate change.