LONDON, Sept 3: Environmental campaigners said on Wednesday they would go to the courts in a bid to stop an asbestos-contaminated French aircraft carrier from being broken up in Britain.

The 32,700-ton Clemenceau, once the pride of the French navy, 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 tons 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.

“Toxic waste should be disposed of close to where it is produced, not transported around the world to be buried in our community,” Ryder said.

Co-campaigner Jean Kennedy said: “We feel that it is a deep injustice to force a small town, which has already disproportionately suffered the ill-effects of polluting industries and has one of the highest cancer rates in the UK, to accept France’s toxic waste.” Lawyers for the group have asked for the case to be heard as soon as possible because the dismantling of the ship is due to start within months.

Phil Shiner, from Public Interest Lawyers, said the campaigners would argue that because facilities exist in France to break up the ship, the HSE had a duty to consider the alternatives to breaking up the ship in Hartlepool.

A HSE spokesman confirmed that a legal challenge had been lodged.—AFP