The Suburb Fighting for its Future
VILLENEUVE-LE-ROI, FRANCE — The air in Villeneuve-le-Roi is different.
It smells of burning rubber, airplanes whirr loudly overhead, and citizens who leave their laundry out to dry come back to find it speckled with grease.
The culprit for all this is the nearby Orly airport, where planes can be seen taking off and landing several times an hour. Paris’ airports are currently administered by Aéroports de Paris (ADP), a company whose shares are 50% state owned, giving the government a strong hand in the transportation sector which many see as a tempering force against the wills of big business. Yet in 2018 President Emmanuel Macron’s government brought up the possibility of selling its shares and privatizing ADP. The plans for privatization have sparked a fierce public debate as to whether the move would aggravate pre-existing problems posed by the airport.
Located thirty minutes from Paris’ bustling center, Villeneuve-le-Roi’s proximity to Orly airport has prompted many citizens to voice annoyance and anger about the level of noise that disrupts their daily lives, and to express concerns over the effects the airport’s activities have on their health. Their local government shares their concerns.
“Noise has an effect on health. That’s proven,” said Rémy Jourdan, chief-of-staff for Villeneuve-le-Roi’s mayor Didier Gonzales. Jourdan also expressed concerns about the local air quality’s affects on citizens’ respiratory health. While acknowledging that causal proof can be difficult to prove without access to citizens’ health records, Jourdan cited studies that found that citizens living in Villeneuve-le-Roi could expect to lose several years of life due to air pollution.
Yet the plans for privatization prompted resistance amongst lawmakers, who, in April, banded together to win a vote to put the subject up for a referendum, a move rarely orchestrated in French politics. Having won the right to have a referendum, the next step is gaining enough backing to trigger it. One of the requirements is gaining the support of one-tenth of the electorate. As a result, a petition supporting the referendum opened in June and has until March 2020 to get more than 4.7 million signatures. By the end of August it had 617,000.
“This referendum can modify politics, French politics,” noted Philippe Ménager, an Orly city official currently running for mayor. Ménager has made opposition to the privatization of ADP one of the central tenants of his campaign due to fears that the move would increase traffic at the airport and aggravate climate pollution. It would also, he said, likely decrease the amount of locals working at the airport, thereby diminishing the airport’s role as a significant employer in the region.
Proponents of privatization argue for the economic benefits that the change would bring. According to Macron’s plans, the sale of the shares — to the tune of $10 billion — would go to paying off state debts and funding a new innovation fund.
Yet for Jourdan, blocking the privatization of ADP is a question closely tied to subjects of security, immigration, and profit seeking. Retaining the state’s hand in ADP would also, he said, prevent a worsening of the noise and air pollution that already plagues Villeneuve-le-Roi. Jourdan insists that his position is not a dogmatic hostility to the idea of privatization in general, but rather the result of a logical assessment of how the area would fare under a changed ADP.
“With a private company would it be better? We’re not sure. Would it be worse? That’s more sure,” he said.
Part of his skepticism is due to past experience with Orly airport and ADP. The airport has a goal of having 200,000 flights in and out of Orly per year, with a hard maximum limit of 250,000 flights. Under this system each airline getting a set amount of flights that they can use as they wish. Currently, however, the airport is accommodating closer to 238,000 flights, and for Jourdan this means that even with the assumedly-steadying hand of the state playing a role, the number of flights vastly exceeds the agreed upon objective. Airlines have also taken to using bigger planes in order to fit more passengers in while not exceeding their limited number of flights. This disingenuous bending of the rules, he feels, will likely worsen once the company is privatized.
Many citizens of Villeneuve-le-Roi expressed contrasting opinions on whether Orly airport had a strong impact on their day-to-day lives.
Letitia, visiting her friend at a local pub, expressed opposition to the privatization of ADP, voicing concerns that the move would lead to even less regulation of the airport’s already poorly controlled pollution emissions, which have already affected her health.
“I have lived here for 20 years, and 12 years ago I became asthmatic,” she said, adding that she, like many others, also has terrible allergies due to the air pollution in the area. Her friend Marie, a barmaid, chimed in her agreement and noted that the sound of planes is an annoying and constant feature of daily life in the area. Both women declined to give their surnames, for privacy reasons.
Giovanna Duranti, a retiree who has lived in Villeneuve-le-Roi since 1980, splits their concerns down the middle. While the noise from the airplanes does not bother her, she does believe that the poor air quality has given her respiratory problems.
Others, however, are unconvinced by the talk of noise complaints and air pollution.
Villeneuve-le-Roi has a large population of seniors as well as a sizeable Portuguese immigrant community, and a trio of elderly Portugese immigrants — Alice, Antonio, and Jose — are quick to wave off the notion that the air quality is particularly terrible or that it is the root of people’s health problems. All three did not wish to share their last names.
“There are a lot of old people here. Our health problems are from our age,” Antonio intoned, as his friends nodded along.
Yet stymying the tide of business will be an uphill battle. And for Frédéric Ferreira, a resident currently renovating his house near one of the airport’s landing strips, the question of what can or will be done does not hold much interest.
“People have to travel, the system of the world is crazy. It’s a necessity,” he said.
