00:00A mammoth project featuring tons of explosives and gigantic drilling machines.
00:05Construction of one of the world's longest railway tunnels running beneath the French-Italian Alps.
00:11It's the most beautiful project in the world.
00:15But some locals are less enthusiastic.
00:19This project is only exacerbating a situation that's already serious. It must be stopped.
00:27The 11 billion euro construction site lies 600 meters underground beneath the Alps.
00:33Emmanuel Umber is in charge.
00:36On this side is France. On that side, Italy.
00:39And from here, we've already constructed 9 kilometers of tunnel in the Italian direction.
00:46In total, the twin-tube tunnel will be just under 60 kilometers long.
00:51Emmanuel Umber has been working in underground engineering for 20 years.
00:55This is his biggest professional challenge to date.
00:59It's a European project.
01:01The objective is to bring people closer together to decarbonize transportation
01:06and to build infrastructure that is sustainable, efficient and beneficial to Europe as a whole.
01:13The drill can manage a maximum of 15 meters per day.
01:17In difficult terrain, the rock layer has to be blasted off.
01:22The work is demanding and the mountain range partially unstable.
01:27Many here are proud to be part of the project.
01:30It's a special kind of terrain here, moving, constantly shifting.
01:34I've been here since 2002. So I've seen some things. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
01:42The Morien Valley in southeastern France is home to some 44,000 people.
01:47It connects France with Italy.
01:50The two single-track tubes in the tunnel will each be 57.5 kilometers long.
01:56The plan is to cut travel time between Lyon and Turin by 45 minutes and to bring freight traffic back
02:02from the roads to the railway.
02:04The tunnel begins here, near the small town of Saint-Jean-de-Maurien.
02:11Philippe Delhomme has been living here for 20 years.
02:13He sees the tunnel as an economic and ecological disaster and is fighting tooth and nail against the infrastructure project.
02:23The construction companies are lining their pockets, but we, the taxpayers, end up paying.
02:29The European Union, France and Italy are co-funding the 11 billion euro construction project.
02:39On top of that, our mountain roads are full of potholes because of the winter and the frost.
02:44They just aren't being repaired.
02:47The rubble is dispatched on trucks and conveyor belts.
02:51Some of it is recycled, the rest disposed of in the valley.
02:55Like here.
02:56Once idyllic, now full of dust and loud machines.
03:00Patrick Jeudin lives right next to a rubble pile.
03:05I'm 70 now, and this will go on for another 10 years.
03:09At 80, life's over.
03:12I'll spend my retirement living by this construction site, without compensation, without anything.
03:19I have to say amen and not complain.
03:25Closed shops, declining population.
03:28Like other rural regions in France, the Morien Valley has been hit hard by deindustrialization.
03:34The mayor of Saint-Jean-de-Morien, Philippe Rollet, highlights the positive effects of the tunnel construction for his community.
03:43The tunnel operator covers a portion of municipal projects, from 10 to 40% in some cases.
03:50Projects like the Cathedral Square.
03:52We've also renovated a school with an investment of just over 2 million euros.
04:00When you spend billions of euros, it creates jobs, but these are temporary jobs that benefit very few residents of
04:07the valley.
04:08The project will just accelerate the population decline.
04:12It's a bit like a highway that connects major hubs or large cities, but never the regions it passes through.
04:23It's incredible. Just awful. They've demolished everything. I'm not happy with it.
04:29Looking ahead, I think it might give us a much needed boost. You just have to be patient during construction.
04:36Drilling tunnels can occasionally cause local groundwater levels to drop.
04:41Officials have already witnessed this side effect at several springs in the valley.
04:45Erika Sanfort is a hydrogeologist who's worried that the area's water supply could soon dry up.
04:53Drilling a tunnel through a mountain has roughly the same effect as pulling the plug out of a bathtub.
04:58In a sense, you're draining the mountain.
05:04Meanwhile, the work underground is progressing meter by meter.
05:10In this kind of environment, people are ultimately very small.
05:14Obviously, we can't compete with the power of the mountains.
05:17And yet, in a way, when we get involved, when we innovate, when we build these machines, we're capable of
05:24moving mountains.
05:28The tunnel is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2033.
05:32Then the first trains will start whizzing through here, deep beneath the majestic Alps.
05:37It's happened.
05:39The stubborn reference has been calledOOO.
05:41It was even 10 years ago in July, the-, do we fill the dual alps.
05:42The problem no matter needs to be
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