AFP Sep 3, 2008
Environmental campaigners are to go to court to try to stop an asbestos-contaminated French aircraft carrier from being broken up in Britain.
The 32,700-tonne Clemenceau has spent the past five years being moved around the globe as officials tried to find a final resting place for the vessel, which contains 700 tonnes of asbestos.
The 51-year-old vessel was towed to India in a failed bid to have it dismantled there before it was announced in July that she will be scrapped by British company Able UK in Hartlepool, northeast England, after it was granted a waste management licence by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
Campaigner Iris Ryder said the Friends of Hartlepool group had lodged a High Court challenge to the decision to bring the ship to Britain from its current base in Brest, western France.
"Today's legal challenge is the beginning of a new stage in the fight by Hartlepool residents to prevent our community from becoming the international toxic waste dumping ground of choice of both governments and polluting industries," she said.
"The Clemenceau was considered too toxic to be broken and dumped in India and Turkey and was even refused permission to be towed through the Suez Canal on its voyage of shame back to France.
A HSE spokesman confirmed that a legal challenge had been lodged.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iPEWt24Fayg03gKJo9jobwjoA3NQ
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