Paris (CNN) — A large French alpine ski resort faced with declining snowfalls is to close after it failed to find funds to turn its pistes into year-round attractions.
The Alpe du Grand Serre Ski Station in southeastern France’s Isère region will not reopen this year after a vote by its local council to halt funding for plans to end reliance on winter sports, the council’s president told radio station, France Bleu.
The resort, near the higher altitude Alpe d’Huez, is one of several lower-lying ski destinations in Europe to face an existential reckoning over the past couple of years as the climate crisis, driven by humans burning fossil fuels, brings warmer, shorter winters.
Faced with steadily decreasing snowfalls, the town had championed a plan, Alpe de Grande Serre 2050, which had aimed to replace ski lifts and improve the station for both summer and winter sports.
“The closure of the station would be truly disastrous for the region,” Marie-Noëlle Battistel, member of parliament for the Isère region, said on local television station Télégrenoble last Friday, a day before the vote.
“There are nearly 200 jobs that depend on [it]. Closing a station of this importance sends a disastrous signal on a national scale.”
On Saturday, 47 members of the Matheysine council, which includes the resort, voted to discontinue a contract with ski lift operator SATA Group.
Only 12 members voted to keep operations running, according to numbers obtained from the council by CNN.
‘No prospect’
Council President Coraline Saurat said that some 2.8 million euros [$3.07 million] have been invested into transforming the area into a year-round resort since 2017.
She said that with winter snow increasingly unreliable, completing the final years of the project was too much of a risk.
“The impact of committing to two more years was considerable with no prospect for the future,” she said, speaking to France Bleu on Saturday.
“The state is not giving us any concrete support for the future of the resort or for a transitional operation,” said Saurat, who had warned in January on France Bleu that the resort was facing a 7 million euros [$7.67 million] hole in its budget.
Alpe du Grand Serre’s closure will serve as a bleak harbinger to numerous other mid-size alpine ski stations also struggling to cope with declining snowfalls and adds to a growing list of resort closures.
On Sunday, the Grand Puy station in France’s Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region was also permanently closed after a public referendum.
Last year, the town of La Sambuy, which runs a family skiing destination near Mont Blanc, dismantled its ski lifts because its winter sports season had shrunk to just a few weeks and it was no longer profitable to keep them open.
Carlo Carmagnola, a snow expert with Météo France who studies the impact of climate change on ski resorts, told CNN earlier this year that 40% of ski resorts in the French Alps now rely on artificially made snow to stay open. In Italy it’s 90% and up to 80% in Austria, he said.
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