Contenu du sommaire : Industrie et environnement

More and more firms are obliged to integrate environmental issues in their objectives and their management tools. It is in the interest of local authorities and, more widely, the inhabitants of a region to encourage these initiatives, which contribute to a better quality living environment, and to link them with developments in the field of planning projects and the management of urban services. Using four detailed verse studies, this article aims to show how the actors of a territory can react in this way. It defends the idea that such initiatives are all the more important because they are capable of becoming a key component of a development project.

Rhône-Poulenc's chemical factories have long dominated the urban area of Roussillon (Isère). Since the 1960's, with the reduction of Rhône-Poulenc's activities, both from an urban and industrial point of view, public sector actors have been compelled to develop an alternative industrial structure. This has been archived notably through the construction of a nuclear power station. However, paradoxically, it was pollution emanating from a small, waste incineration plant, and not from the two local 'giants', that gave rise to industrial disputes in the 1970's. This led to the setting up of an air monitoring system. The implementation of this network did not result in it being able to deal with the problems for which it was originály intended. However, it has proved to be a potentially rich institutional framework for discussing the town's industrial pollution problems.

Polluted land is the sad heritage of mor than a century of industrial activity. Waste materials pose a wide range of problems for the reuse of derelict land for which the nature of past use has often been forgotten. In such cases the human and social sciences offer a framework for investigation. Systematic research, supported by a proven methodology, leads to the notion of sites which are 'potentially polluted'. Their resulting inventory and mapping has important implications because their number is obviously greater than that of the sites officially classified as polluted.

The need to identify someone to take responsibility for the rehabilitation of a polluted site has led administrative authorities to seek out the owner of the land as the person responsible for the waste materials found there or for the installation. However, the owner has the possibility to invoke his good faith provided that he was able to take certain measures prior to acquiring the land or the plant in question. The former owner may have agreed also to take responsibility for all damage prior to the transfer of ownership. Nevertheless, it is the present owner, being easy to identify, who is always likely to be troubled at some time, even if finally he is exonerated from his responsibility or, if relevant, is able to recover his costs.

This article is concerned with the financial issues of treating former industrial sites which are polluted. The importance of the costs of depollution may sometimes lead to a selective and hierarchical pattern of treatment in relation to the seriousness of the problem. This in term influences the reuse of the sites. However, the recycling of land in an urban context, undertaken due to regulatory pressure, may sometimes provide the opportunity for a firm to increase the value its assets. In such cases the balance between costs and benefits is not always unfavorable to the polluter...

The aim of the present study is to demonstrate, on the basis of three recent oblique aerial photographs, that the landscape shows the marks of direct and indirect impacts due to the salt effluents produced by the soda works established in the urban area of Nancy. The Solvay and Novacarb soda works are chemical industries producing sodium carbonate from salt and limestone. They have deeply transformed the landscape in the bottom of the Meurthe Valley with the creation of multiple basins for collecting and treating both liquid and solid waste from the soda works. But the impact of these effluents goes far beyond the local context and the resulting disturbances in the drinking water supply of many communes located downstream have caused new, indirect and more extensive modifications to the landscape. The recent project aiming at enlarging the two soda works, and as a consequence of this the increased volume of effluents, have raised a polemic between the industry and the communes using the water from the Moselle River. Diverse solutions for the treatment of salt effluents, all of them involving significant landscape alterations, are now being considered.

The exploitation of oil which, over the last thirty years, has been the main source о wealth of the autonomous province of Khanty-Mansisk, is also the cause of a major 'ecological crisis' which affects the plain of the middle Ob, and especially the district of Nijnévartovsk. The oil industry remains the main source of danger due to the importance of atmospheric emissions and the frequency of accidents which pollute numerous sites. The atmosphere, water and the earth, vectors for the diffusion of pollution. generate hazards affecting not only natural environments but also the population. Research undertaken in the middle of the 1980s to make a first assessment of the situation show that both ecosystems and populations are increasingly vulnerable to pollution.

Russia is one of the world's largest gas and oil producing countries. Its richest fields occur where permafrost is often present. These fields were rapidly exploited without much environmental concern. Cryogenic processes and corrosion shorten the lifetime of pipelines which are often in swampy and remote areas where access is difficult. The task of monitoring the pipeline requires remotely sensed data. Airborne imagery is more expensive than spaceborne imagery but the latter provides greater choice of sensors and higher spatial resolutions. Radar sensors have shown great potential to study the topography and can operate by night or cloudy weather. Optical sensors are still irreplaceable for vegetation mapping.

The connection between the company and its environment has changed from indifference and constraint to cooperation. The gap between the Russian and French situations which is studied in this issue can be explained by the opposition of two different systems of development. However, this contrast could be reduced by the diffusion of a greater environmental awareness, rt is possible to draw some common lessons from the study of the integration of ecological concerns by firms and from the subsequent management of the potentially contaminated sites.