PersoResto (2018-2020)

PersoResto: Efficiency and social perception of the restoration of the Tillet River and of the water quality of the Bourget Lake.

Coordinator:  Stéphane Pesce (INRAE – UR RiverLy, Lyon)

Partner PIs:   

• Stéphane Pesce & Gilles Armani (INRAE – EMA, UR RiverLy, Lyon)
• Emmanuel Naffrechoux (USMB – LCME, Le Bourget du lac)
• Emilie Lyautey  (USMB – UMR CARRTEL, Le Bourget du lac)

Study site:

Tillet River, tributary of Lake Bourget (Savoie)

Context and main  objectives:

The sediments of river Tillet, a tributary of Lake Bourget (France, Savoie) were historically contaminated by PCBs thus contributing to most of PCB fluxes to the lake littoral zone.

The downstream section of the river was restored in 2012-2103 but recent chemical monitoring (see for example the CommuSED projet) have highlighted a progressive contamination of the restored sediments due to continuous inputs from the unrestored upstream section. Accordingly, the necessity for performing a new restoration process (including the upstream section) is clearly questioned.

In this context, PersoResto is a pluridisciplinary project that aims to:

• assess the contamination dynamics in the Tillet River to evaluate the mid- to long-term efficiency of the previous restoration process
• evaluate the social perception of restoration efforts across social groups representing different interests and problem definitions in the local and territorial context