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ENVIRONMENT

French city to fine drivers who leave engines running

In an effort to cut air pollution, one French local authority has announced that it will begin levying fines on drivers who leave their engines running while parked.

Published: 19 August 2022 11:21 CEST
French city to fine drivers who leave engines running
(Photo: Philippe Merle / AFP)

In an effort to reduce traffic pollution, Nancy, in the Meuthe-et-Moselle département of eastern France, has issued a decree stating that private motorists who keep their vehicle’s engines running while they are parked may be liable for a €135 fine.

“Too often, the engines of vehicles parked or out of traffic are left running for long minutes, unnecessarily releasing gases and particles, while the air quality in the city is strongly impacted by car and road traffic,” the mairie said in a statement.

Nancy’s pollution busting decree strengthens an established but often-ignored law.

France’s Highway Code points to a 1963 decree from the Ministre des Travaux Publics et des Transports, that states: “Motor vehicles must not emit smoke, toxic, corrosive or odorous gases, under conditions likely to inconvenience the public or compromise public health and safety.”

The penalty – enforceable anywhere in France – is a fine of €135, which may be reduced or increased depending on the time it takes any offender to pay-up.

The city’s deputy mayor Bertrand Masson, told Franceinfo that fines would not be implemented immediately: “The objective is not to penalise but to remind everyone of their individual responsibility,” he said.

“We are in a period of education. It is first of all to make people aware of the problem, not to penalise them.”

According to the National Agency for Health Security, air pollution is responsible for more than 400,000 premature deaths in Europe each year, including 48,000 in France.

This measure does not apply to emergency vehicles, public service agents performing urgent duties, or refrigerated trucks transporting foodstuffs. 

The French government came in for criticism earlier in the summer when a video was released online showing cars waiting to pick up ministers after a meeting at the Elysée – all with their engines running while parked.

The images were particularly embarrassing for the government as it had just launched a strategy to cut energy use.

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ENVIRONMENT

The guardian angels of the source of the Seine

The river Seine, the centrepiece of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony in July, starts with a few drops of water in a mossy grotto deep in the woods of central France.

Published: 25 April 2024 09:43 CEST
The guardian angels of the source of the Seine

And not a day goes by without Jacques and Marie-Jeanne Fournier going to check the source only a few paces from their door.

“I go there at least three times a day. It’s part of me,” 74-year-old Marie-Jeanne told AFP.

Her parents were once the guardians of the source, and now that unofficial mantle has fallen on her and husband Jacques.

Barely 60 souls live in the village of Source-Seine in the wooded hills north of Dijon.

By the time the tiny stream has reached the French capital 300 kilometres away it has become a mighty river 200 metres wide.

But some mornings barely a few damp traces are visible at the source beneath the swirling dragonflies. If you scratch about a bit in the grass, however, a small stream quickly forms.

The source — one of two spots where the river officially starts — bubbles up through the remains of an ancient Gallo-Roman temple built about 2,000 years ago, said Jacques Fournier, 73.

Celtic goddess

But you could easily miss this small out-of-the-way valley. There are few signs to direct tourists to the statue of the goddess Sequana, the Celtic deity who gave her name to the river.

In the mid-19th century Napoleon III had a grotto and cave built “where the source was captured to honour the city of Paris and Sequana,” said Marie-Jeanne Fournier.

Her parents moved into a house next to the grotto and its reclining nymph in the early 1950s when she was four years old.

Her father Paul Lamarche was later appointed its caretaker and would regularly welcome visitors. A small stone bridge over the Seine while it is still a stream is named after him.

“Like most children in the village in the 1960s,” Fournier learned to swim in a natural pool in the river just downstream from her home.

“It was part of my identity,” said Fournier, who has lived all her life close to rivers. She retired back to Source-Seine to run a guesthouse because “the Seine is a part of my parents’ legacy”.

The Olympic flame is due to be carried past the site on July 12th on its way to Paris.

The couple will be there to greet it, but as members of the Sources of the Seine Association, they are worried how long the river will continue to rise near their home.

Every year the grotto has become drier and drier as climate change hits the region, where some of France’s finest Burgundy wines are produced.

“My fear is that the (historic) source of the Seine will disappear,” said Marie-Jeanne Fournier. “Perhaps the source will be further downstream in a few years.”

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