Dear Léman, we'd like to take this opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year and, above all, good health.
Our most immediate wish is for a big winter cold snap, but a really intense one that would make the Grand Brassage of your waters, bringing oxygen back to the deepest layers, which are currently suffering. We know, you've been waiting 12 years for this regenerative event, which, with this damned global warming, is becoming less and less likely and more and more frequent.
We also wish you many other good things, all of them more closely linked to your immediate environment and, first and foremost, better relations with your tributaries. We hope that your tributaries, large and small, will only supply you with really good water obtained from areas that are motivated to take care of their "natural" resources down to the smallest detail. Admittedly, your relations with your tributaries and their territories have improved a great deal over the last 20 years, but that's not enough, because preserving your health requires that you be supplied exclusively with Very High Quality water, even during dry periods. To ensure that this wish does not remain a pious hope, many efforts need to be made: Controlling the many discrete discharges of pollutants, installing separate sewer systems everywhere, stopping the addition of indigestible chemicals to wastewater that make a mockery of treatment plants, limiting soil sealing, the cause of so much diffuse pollution...not to mention all the deposits of so-called inert materials along the banks of your tributaries, out of sight but so close to you during floods... Sadly, the list of damage suffered by the waters that feed you is long! Their harmful effects are developing in fits and starts, under the incredulous gaze of the sceptics who are still numerous among the political and economic "decision-makers", but also among the general population. The ASL - rest assured, dear Léman - is enraged by these indecent piles of macro and micro plasticsthe insidious cocktails of micropollutants, the accumulation of biodiversity problems.... in short, everything that reflects a lack of individual and collective awareness of how lucky we are to have you and of our responsibility to protect you.
Of course, as far as the water is concerned, our wishes go out to your coastline. May it be renatured as much as possible and thus revitalised, open to biodiversity and lovers of natural resources. We know that the artificialisation of this area, which is so crucial to your ecological balance, weighs particularly heavily on you.
Our last wish is to wish you a good friendly relationship with your direct users, drinkers of your water, walkers, bathers, sailors, paddlers, fishermen, swimmers, divers, picnickers, a minority of whom have little respect for the services provided and the sublime places they frequent and abandon just about everywhere, particularly on your beaches, butts, packaging and various types of rubbish.
In conclusion, we can assure you that the ASL is working hard to promote your indispensability and the unique, sumptuous and irreplaceable nature of your existence. We are doing our utmost to ensure that you are not seen as a vulgar aquarium filled with exotic species, a sort of mega-pool or amusement park, or even an inexhaustible reservoir of real estate or energy. Too many interests don't even understand that your seductive power depends on preserving your charm and prestige. As for the quality of your water and your environment, we need to keep reminding ourselves that it underpins the quality of our uses and that it requires a certain sobriety and humility on the part of human activities, an awareness of your ecological limits. While we can rejoice in your new-found good looks over the last decade, in the transparency of your waters... that famous "Lake Geneva blue", let's not forget that it's also that of a convalescent, and a convalescent stressed by new threats.
Here you are, dear Léman: Happy New Year and good health, which we look forward to sharing with you! Your good health is our good health too, isn't it?
Kind regards.
For the ASL
Pascal Mulattieri, Chairman
Jean-Marcel Dorioz, Vice-Chairman
Raphaëlle Juge, Committee member
Suzanne Mader-Feigenwinter, General Secretary
