Who is not offended by the recent fine imposed on the Albi circuit for noise pollution ? In Nogaro, the opposite has just happened since a local resident has just been ordered by the Agen Court of Appeal to pay €5000 in damages to the company that manages the circuit, plus €1000. € for appeal costs. The complainant claimed 100 euros for amenity damage and €000 for economic damage, as reported by the daily La Dépêche .
The complainant has owned a house since 1978 very close to a Gers circuit which has been in operation since 1960, i.e. 18 years earlier. He had already had a complaint filed in 1999 for compensation “for abnormal neighborhood disturbance” dismissed.
In 2015, back to the court case, the local resident arguing that the various works carried out from 2005 on the circuit had only worsened these nuisances. Deemed inadmissible by the Auch High Court, in particular because it was time-barred, this summons meant that the plaintiff had to pay €1 to SEMPA, whose lawyer had pleaded "the unreasonable and manifestly unfounded obstinacy" of the resident.
Caroline Diviès, who manages the Nogaro circuit, specifies in La Dépêche that the circuit has had an internal beacon installed at the circuit which permanently measures decibels at a cost of €20 per year, as well as an external beacon to analyze the comfort of local residents. It goes without saying that the Paul-Armagnac de Nogaro circuit, like all other routes in France, complies with regulatory standards.
For the director, the situation of Nogaro has nothing to do with that from Albi, where it is an infringement of the approval order (in this case the obligation to install a noise barrier before resuming activity) that the police court sanctioned on January 19, 2021, following Dozens of complaints filed in 2019 by residents of the Séquestre circuit.
In a fairly similar case, the Lédenon circuit, in the Gard, also established for a long time, has just obtained satisfaction before the Council of State: several local residents' associations had contacted the Council of State to have the circuit approval order. As in Nogaro, the circuit won its case.
