When you ask for directions to reach the "asbestos mountains", in the land of what was the Morandi bridge, they don't even bat an eye: «Always follow the river». The gaze is turned to the horizon, but only a longitudinal puddle can be glimpsed, climbing backwards, from Genoa towards the Alps. For everyone, that dry stream like the Po is the Polcevera, which from the mountains flows straight into the mouth of the city of Christopher Columbus. The steel bridge that replaced the one that dramatically collapsed on August 14, 2018 is the terminus.
Towards the Third Pass
Before meeting the provincial road number six, the one that takes you to the heart of the Terzo Valico dei Giovi, you have to face a jumble of viaducts, tunnels and ring roads that separate the port of Genoa from the mainland. Getting to Cravasco is a bit like going down the hill to Tascusì, on the peaks of Desulo. Hairpin bends that rival Alghero - Scala Piccada or Iglesias - S.Angelo, modest altitudes, no more than 500 meters above sea level, if it weren't for the limited space to reach them. When you pass Campomorone, the leading municipality of a group of scattered villages and houses, built along that river reduced to a mere ghost, to reach the headquarters of the largest Italian construction site, you still have to cross two mountain hamlets, Campora and Isoverde. You perceive that you are about to cross the entrance door of the factory of super-fast tunnels and tracks, when the road suddenly becomes flaming asphalt.
The crater on the mountain
To understand where the asbestos caravan destined for the Sardinian landfill should start from, deep in Sulcis, a land that has always been plundered, there is no need for a road sign: on the left, you bump into a gutted gray-concrete mountain as if they wanted to solve it with blows dynamite the problem of the fog in the Po valley by erasing peaks and creating drafts, on the right, however, a fenced-in construction site as if it were a military range. To connect the two fronts there is a Flying Belt, that of Cravasco, a flying bridge that connects the inside of the tunnels being excavated and the mountain gutted by the nearby cement plant. A sort of continuous flow conveyor belt, because here, to build the high-speed railway, 90% entirely in tunnels, destined to connect Genoa with the Alps and the Rhine, people work day and night, seven days a week. Every day, a mountain of asbestos-bearing rock is extracted from those gun barrels driven into the stone, i.e. slag with very high asbestos contents. All stuff to be extracted and sent who knows where. Certainly the papers sent to the Sardinian Region to ask for the derogation to be able to send them to Sardinia speak in no uncertain terms of more than 50 trucks a week, stuff of 1000 tons every seven days.
