It was just after breakfast on a Monday morning late in November when across the Alpes-Maritimes, the Var and in Monaco electric power from the regional grid was suddenly cut off. Lights went off, Nice’s trams suddenly stopped and across the Alpes-Maritimes some 250 people found themselves trapped in lifts. Only where emergency generators existed – in hospitals, for example, and at Nice airport – could things carry on more or less normally. A Reporter man going through the papers over coffee in a bar on Jean-Médecin assumed there was a wildcat strike. Not so. As the recently arrived prefect François Lamy explained, this blackout was due to “the fragility of the power supply in our region”.

Put simply, when you switch on a lamp, a microwave, a television or what have you in this part of France the arrival of electric current depends on a single high-tension line bringing in power from beyond Avignon. When demand peaks – as in very cold or very hot weather – the system is put under strain as it is by the needs of a continually increasing population. So what’s to be done? A project for a second high-tension line was abandoned in the face of environmental protests. But this latest blackout has highlighted the need for the safeguarding of the electricity supply here. And now this demand benefits from the political muscle of Christian Estrosi. He called an emergency meeting within days and has got regional and national approval for a second line to be operative by 2010.

Estrosi, who has clearly signalled his environmental concerns, has declared himself “fully satisfied” with the outcome. The line will be laid underground, much of it alongside the motorway and the LGV track. It will mean “an end to blackouts” but, stresses the mayor, “We’ve got to be serious about saving energy and looking at alternative sources.” The estimated cost of the new line: up to €7 billion – and that’s going to show up in our local taxes.

From Riviera Reporter Issue 131: Feb/March 2009

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