France has called the Belgian Jan De Nul Group to clean up the oil-polluted beaches of the French Riviera. The pollution, which still continues, was caused by the collision of two vessels on the Mediterranean Sea which resulted a leak in the fuel tanks.
Envisan, the environmental subsidiary of the dredging and construction group, signed a contract with the French company Le Floch Dépollution for cleaning the contaminated sand using Envisan’s soil treatment centre near Toulon.
At the beginning of October, two ships collided with each other on the Mediterranean Sea and the collision caused a leak in the fuel tanks.
Part of the pollution was immediately captured at sea, but another large part reached the beaches of Southwest France, within few days. The Prefecture of the Var department was forced to close the beaches to the public. Until this day, oil pollution continues to be washed ashore onto the beaches.
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Envisan is awarded the contract to process all contaminated sand in its soil treatment center near Toulon where it will be cleaned with physical-chemical washing process. For the time being, this concerns about 2,000 tons of sand, but since there is still pollution exposing ashore, this amount may increase.
Currently, in consultation with local environmental authorities, Envisan is looking into whether it is possible to reuse the clean sand after the treatment to re-clean the excavated beaches.
