A new green lung in the Val d’Oise. To give a second life to the plain of Pierrelaye-Bessancourt, the Île-de-France region has pulled out all the stops. After decades of pollution, this area has been transformed into a vast forest since 2019. An ambitious project with a cost: 84 million euros.
Giving polluted land a second life is possible and the Île-de-France region wants to lead by example. Polluted by the spread of sewage from Paris, the plain of Pierrelaye-Bessancourt, located in the Val-d’Oise, has also served as a wild dumping ground. However, in 2019, the region decided to give this 1,300-hectare area a different fate, as reported by the site of France info.
After the cleanup, it now plans to plant 1 million trees over the next six to eight years and eventually turn it into a forest. This process is happening little by little, at the rate of a hundred plantations a day, of a dozen different species. “We must first acquire the land, pay the rightholders who deserve it, do the preparatory work for the plantations, then the plantations themselves, and all of that comes at a fairly high cost”details on France info Bernard Tailly, president of the Pierrelaye-Bessancourt Plain Development Syndicate.
The 84 million needed for the birth of this forest are partly paid for by the former polluter, the Syndicate for the remediation of the Paris agglomeration, specifies the information site.