A Welcomed Rehabilitation in Mont Blanc

Mont Lachat recadréeOn Monday December 15, the 110 hectares surrounding and including the Mont-Lachat wind tunnel site have been declared a “sensitive natural space” and a € 650 000 budget has been allocated for the restoration of the site.
The buildings, located near the access trail to the normal way of Mont-Blanc are in a serious degradation stage and is an ugly wart denaturing the area with no proper usage found for it.

It is a main passage for the 20 000 mountaineers aiming at climbing Mont-Blanc each year.

Mountain Wilderness, proMONT-BLANC and the WWF have militated for years to get this site rehabilitated. The Pandathlon was a major event to make it happen.
Various players (public and Private) are jointly making the “investment”, some of that money is tax credit, so it’s not all real money changing hands.  A big chunk of the real money is coming from the Pandathlon event though.

This massive construction is made of reinforced concrete (has a lot of buried metal in the concrete) similar to a bunker, furthermore there is a lot of asbestos and lead to take care of, thus the dismantling procedure is complex to protect adequately the workers.
Located at an elevation of 2000 m , the transport of material will be done using only the small train going to the “Nid d’Aigle”.

All passive material will be sorted out, fragmented and used to landfill the place to restore it to its primitive shape. Alpine seeds have been selected to better integrate the place to its surrounding.
Work should start and hopefully finish in 2015
(BM)

Comments are closed.