Faced with global warming and the state of drought affecting France, voices are rising to reflect on the issue of water consumption but also its sharing. It is in the name of these issues that a hundred people - a thousand, according to the organizers, between five hundred and eight hundred, according to the gendarmes - protested on Saturday April 1 against the "grabbing" of water by STMicroelectronics in Crolles, in Isère, in front of the headquarters of the semiconductor production company.
The procession of activists, dressed in blue, wanted to be "peaceful, joyful and family" and demonstrated under a few drops of rain. Gathered under the slogan "Water, not chips", the demonstrators are contesting the factory extension project, announced last summer by the Franco-Italian company and carried out in partnership with the American GlobalFoundries, synonymous according to them with an excess of water consumption.
Site expansion 'can't justify everything', campaigners say
The project, worth a total of 5.7 billion euros, must be supported under the France 2030 plan, as well as by the European Union under the Chips Act, a plan to double the production of semi- drivers in the European Union by 2026.
"We are worried about water resources and about democracy," said Julien, one of the protest organizers, who preferred to remain anonymous. The thousand jobs promised with the extension of the site "cannot justify everything", says the activist, who wonders about the choices in terms of water sharing. In the gathered crowd, another activist, Emilie, "prefers that [her] access is limited to screen time than to drinking water".
“It is claimed that there is no problem with water withdrawal, but what about the future? asks Sébastien Triqueneaux, researcher at a CNRS institute in Grenoble and member of the Scientifiques en Rébellion collective.
The STMicroelectronics site and the municipality of Crolles in which it is located are supplied by the drinking water network of the Grenoble metropolitan area, but belong to the neighboring territory of the community of municipalities of Grésivaudan.
More than 6,000 m3 more water pumped every day by the end of 2023
Until then, the metropolis of Grenoble, which directly manages its drinking water network, supplied 23,000 m3 of water per day, or 8.4 million m3 per year. But under a purchase agreement signed in October 2021, this flow should increase to 29,000 m3 per day by the end of 2023, "allowing to take into account the evolution of needs for the coming years, in particular those of the industries of the territory", underlines a deliberation of the community of communes of Grésivaudan.
In 2021, according to STMicroelectronics' environmental statement, 4.23 million m3 had been withdrawn by the plant, with almost all of this volume then discharged into surrounding waterways. In 2019, this volume withdrawn was 3.46 million m3.
In France, approximately 8% of declared pumping (excluding dams) is intended in particular for economic activities, mainly industry (80% of withdrawals for economic activities). However, the majority of this water is returned, which means that the weight of these uses devoted to economic activities in consumption is lower (around 4% of the estimated total in 2019).
