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FRANCE’S environment minister, Brice Lalonde, is expected to shelve
controversial plans to dam France’s longest river, the Loire. The government
wanted to dam the upper reaches of the river to control the flow of water,
both to prevent a repetition of the deadly floods of the early 1980s and
to assure a supply of water in dry summers to the nuclear power stations
on the river bank. Environmentalists opposed the barrages, calling the Loire
the last truly wild river in France.