French prime minister Edouard Balladur has stirred up a hornet's nest by reviving the Rhine-Rhone Canal project first proposed and also rejected in 1961. The environmentalists, including France's Green Party are opposing this decision tooth and nail. The canal will have 23 locks and will cost around us $32,645,161. Dominique Voynet, the Green Party's spokesperson, said the "Rhine-Rhone canal was "useless and ecologically ruinous", and supported a planned canal linking the river Seine with Dunkirk. She argued that the canal will not attract enough traffic. Experts say the canal will do irreparable damage to the little-developed Doubs river valley's ecosystem through which it would pass.
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