The defenders
Opposition to the project includes several associations: Surfrider Landes, Friends of the Earth 40, Attac Landes Côte Sud, Collective of Associations for the Defence of the Environment in the Basque Country and Southern Landes (CADE), Collectif Landes Urgence Climat et Environnement, Collectif des Surfeurs du Born, Collectif des Surfeurs Landais, France Nature Environnement Nouvelle-Aquitaine (FNE NA), Landes Environnement Attitude (LEA), Sepanso Aquitaine, Surfrider Foundation Europe, Surfrider Gironde, Surfrider Côte Basque, Synapse Crew Europe, and Urgence Climat Landes. To present their arguments, the collective has created a Facebook page listing 24 reasons (economic, ecological and surfing-related) to say NO TO THE CASTETS SURFPARK. It’s a way of saying loud and clear: ‘You want to build a wave pool for us, but we don’t want it!’
State of the environment
Advocates anticipate very high water and electricity consumption. For example, public drinking water consumption would be equivalent to more than 120 Olympic swimming pools over 11 months/year.
The construction of the surf park and theresulting concreting would destroy the forest and its biodiversity.
With the surf basin classified as a water sports facility rather than an artificial swimming area, and without any monitoring by the Landes Regional Health Agency, users may have concerns about potential health risks.
This Castets project is the only artificial wave pool project in France that has not yet been abandoned, following the halting of other projects (the three previous projects in the Landes, as well as those in Sevran in the Paris region, Saint-Père-en-Retz in Brittany, Lacanau and Saint-Jean-de-Luz).
Furthermore, a surf park consumes energy to create waves. 1.6 kWh for a small wave (1.2 m for 10 seconds), three times more for a 1.5 m wave lasting 15 seconds, and the figures continue to increase exponentially for larger waves. Given that a French household of four (two adults and two children) consumes 13.7 kWh per day, each surfer uses the electricity of three families per day for a one-hour session on medium-sized waves. This does not include the energy required for shops, offices, hotels and water filtration systems, which doubles the daily requirements. In the current context of climate change, we do not see the point of this project.
Our demands
We want to prevent the construction of this surf park in Castets.
