Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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...

The French Wikipedia page on Celles [1] hints at an explanation. It says that the initial project was to fill the dam in two phases, first to 139m, then to 150m. Celles is at 144m on average. So I'm thinking that there was a change of plan for some reason and that the dam stayed filled up to 139m only. The article goes on to say that the official decision to definitively keep the water level that way was only made in 1996, which may also explain why no project to rebuild was authorised earlier.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celles_(H%C3%A9rault)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com