Amazon sorting centre near France's Pont du Gard is an 'affront' to Romans' greatest aqueduct

Plans to build a vast Amazon sorting centre within sight of France's famed Pont du Gard are an “affront” to the Roman’s greatest aqueduct that is a Unesco world treasure, say detractors.

Their warning comes amid a local row over whether the facility belonging to the American e-commerce conglomerate is an unwanted eyesore in a relatively untouched area or an economic gift horse in a southern French region in desperate need of jobs.

The 2,000-year old Pont du Gard rises 160ft and spans 1,500ft of the Gardon valley. It is the highest of all Roman aqueduct bridges, and one of the best-preserved. The monument near Nimes is the fifth most visited monument in France, with around 1.25 million visits per year.

Some 20,000 people have signed a petition calling for local authorities to halt the imminent construction of the “immense” 40,000 square metre sorting centre on current Côte-du-Rhône vineyards belonging to the village of Fournès.

Calling the site a “blot on the landscape”, petitioners say the centre “will be the first and the last image that millions of visitors to the Pont du Gard and the region will see”.

“The proposal to undertake such a major industrial project adjacent to this exceptional site would represent an irreversible assault on the heritage of the Gard, the Occitania region and France,” claim local environment and heritage defence groups Adere and Prima Vera.

The expected 500 lorries and 3,000 vehicles that will transport goods from the site will create “pollution, road congestion, explosion of CO2 emissions, health risks,” they argue.

The project has split the local population, with officials of a string of nearby villages dead against it, backed by some residents and an influential crowd of Parisian neo-rurals, reportedly including ex-culture minister Françoise Nyssen.

However, a group of other 17 villages around the Pont du Gard and Fournès’ mayor, Christelle Hinque, support the plan.

Claude Martinet, incumbent mayor of nearby Montfrin said: “Even if I don’t agree with everything Amazon does, this project is indispensable. It will create jobs. For once a business is interested in us, we shouldn’t refuse. If we stop them from coming, they’ll go elsewhere,” he told Nouvel Obs. At 13 percent, the local unemployment rate is well above the national average.

Detractors counter that since promising 600 jobs, the figure has already dropped to 150 and could reduce further due to “robotisation”. They cite ex-French digital minister Mounir Mahjoubi who said that for every job Amazon creates in France, it destroys 2.2 others in traditional commerce.

Since receiving planning permission in September 2019, Adere has sued Ms Hinque and other officials for “illegal conflict of interest” as they sold their land to the developer in charge of the site.

France’s Confederation of merchants has also waded in, calling Amazon centres in general “an attack against physical commerce, which doesn’t benefit from the same rules”. Its petition to oust such centres altogether from France has obtained 62,000 signatures.

It has received the support of Delphine Batho, a Green MP who has tabled a draft bill calling for a two-year moratorium on all new Amazon logistics depots in France.

“A major transformation of our economy is in the pipeline, which has been debated nowhere with devastating social and economic impacts,” she said.