
Lake Salagou was designed to drown the village of Celles, but never did - acsillag
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/celles-abandoned-village-france
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zokier
Article tells nice story but offers little explanation. Why did the lake end
up 11 m shallower than planned? Why starting to rebuild took fifty years? What
does "bail réel solidaire" actually mean?

Also they are planning to have 35 people in the village, that sounds very
tiny.

~~~
feb
Le "bail réel solidaire" is a special type of lease contract in France created
in 2015. It's used by state institutions to rent buildings to poorer people at
decent prices. Those lease contracts grant some long term property rights.
Unlike normal lease contracts, the duration goes from 18 to 99 years. The
contracts don't transfer the ownership of the building itself and have
mechanisms to avoid real estate speculation which drive the prices up.

Source: [https://location-
immobilier.ooreka.fr/astuce/voir/590869/bai...](https://location-
immobilier.ooreka.fr/astuce/voir/590869/bail-reel-solidaire)

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Zardoz84
Meanwhile on Spain, a recovered village would be demolished and the people
that recovered it, are being punished to pay the demolition.

(on spanish) [https://www.elsaltodiario.com/pueblos-recuperados/llamada-
de...](https://www.elsaltodiario.com/pueblos-recuperados/llamada-defender-
pueblo-recuperado-fraguas)

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knolax
> “Some people think it’s good, but it would be especially good if it wasn’t
> in their [former] house,”

This implies that some of the people expropriated didn't their get homes back.
Instead of getting new families to move in why not simply return these people
their homes.

~~~
mark-r
I think in many (most?) cases the former owners simply aren't alive anymore.
Presumably they were paid for the houses when they were kicked out too, so
that would complicate things.

~~~
droithomme
This same thing has happened in the USA as well. TVA will use eminent domain
to seize a bunch of properties, paying fair market value (usually a little bit
above appraisal, hardly enough to compensate for having one's farm destroyed
and needing to start over), and then sometimes the project falls through or
gets cancelled. 20, 30, 50 years later, the property is sitting there, now
federal land, no one on it, with no planned use for the future. It would make
sense to sell it to someone to use, but they never do. They just squat on vast
acreages acquired for obsolete projects.

New London Connecticut went to the Supreme Court to establish the right of
local governments to seize private property on behalf of for-profit
multinational corporations, under the theory that the corporation would pay
more in tax and thus evicting the owner and seizing their home is a public
good. Connecticut won and established this right permanently as fundamental to
the Constitution, unable to be challenged or diminished by law. New London's
corporate master then decided they didn't really want the land after all.
Owner was cast out and her life destroyed, her house sitting rotting to this
day, no taxes at all being collected. But thank God the corporations have this
new Constitutional right to seize any private property under eminent domain!

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
I agree that that SCOTUS decision was horrifying, but I'm assuming that the
justices did their best to faithfully interpret the Constitution.

I imagine Congress could pass laws or Constitutional amendments to undo the
damage, if sufficiently motivated.

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Jgrubb
This exact same thing happened just over the hill from where I live now.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocks_Island_Dam_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocks_Island_Dam_controversy)

~~~
labster
Except in your case, they never built a dam, while in OP they did, but a few
meters shorter. Exact, give or take a few million liters of water.

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crystaldev
The verb is inundate.

~~~
droithomme
I agree that inundate is more correct, but the article itself uses drowned:

 _> How to Make Sense of an Undrowned Town_

...

 _> Then, local government decided the inhabitants of Celles would be evicted
so the whole area could be drowned._

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emmelaich
> _All tourist business will be conducted in a single co-op building, and will
> be run collectively._

IOW, guaranteed to fail.

