in the ski resort of La Bresse, a controversy grows around the transport of snow by truck – Libération

The director of the La Bresse ski school transported 70 tonnes of snow during the Christmas holidays to replenish the area. A wacky but legal company, denounced by environmental associations.

An incredible story but revealing of the critical state of French ski resorts. Faced with the glaring lack of snow, the director of the La Bresse ski school, in the Vosges, admitted on Wednesday February 14 to having transported on his own initiative, by truck, “70 tonnes”. » of snow towards the station. The idea was to restock the station’s kindergarten. A way, according to the person concerned Eric Flieller, to “save jobs” and “maintain the economy of a region”.

For several years, ski resorts have been facing a growing snow deficit, which goes hand in hand with human-caused global warming. Snow cannons, artificial lakes… Resorts are redoubling their efforts to keep their ultra-threatened economy afloat and an elitist sport whose future is more than uncertain. Eric Flieller, for his part, found nothing better to do than to collect snow from a summit located a few kilometers from the station. He says he brought snow in a truck driven by a ski school instructor holding a “70 ton” heavy goods vehicle license, which “represents 50 square meters by 50 centimeters of thickness, it’s ridiculous.” If the transport of snow by truck is not illegal, it raises questions about its superficial nature.

“Hold-up the night”

Environmental associations, notably the local Alsace Nature and Lorraine Nature Environnement, criticized this transport of snow last weekend. According to them, it took place at the end of December, when the La Bresse ski resort was the only one in the Vosges Massif to be open, due to lack of sufficient snow. A cargo which constitutes, according to them, “a hold-up of snow”, and reflects a race to artificialize ski resorts with no way out in the face of global warming.

The associations had notably highlighted screenshots from the resort’s webcam showing that a slope contained only a little snow on December 25 at the end of the day, then much more in the night of December 26. It was groomed at the start of the day and used as a toboggan run. For his part, the director of the ski school assures that the transport took place “on January 6” and denounces a “ridiculous controversy” and “which does not has no place to be”. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t think I had done something” that would take “such proportions,” he added, saying he was “stunned” by the scale of the the controversy.

“It saved the end of the Christmas holiday season” by allowing “classes for toddlers” and “school skiing” to be completed in kindergarten, according to its presidents. monitions. This would have saved “jobs throughout the Vosges basin,” he insisted, explaining that he had decided on this transport so that “everyone gets by: tourists and people. who live from this.” “If that, it’s a crime,” he tries to come to terms with his feelings. As a reminder, at the current rate of global warming, 91% of European ski resorts are threatened.

Quoted by the daily Vosges Morning, the mayor of La Bresse refused to overwhelm the resort’s ski school, whose ski area extends from 900 m to 1,350 m above sea level, too low for hope to survive in the long term. She thus recalled that transporting snow on the slopes is a widespread practice in the resorts, “to make dressings”. This story is perhaps the ideal moment to question this all-ski model, in a context where its viability is no longer assured.