There is not a breath of wind. The thermometer is 38 degrees in the land of the Country of Shadows. The construction site with its dusty roads is deserted. The only car that faces that proscenium "adorned" by steel columns still lying at the foot of Mount Linas is foreign. The license plate, "MSH", leaves no room for doubt: Mansfeld-Südharz district, in the powerful German Saxony. Entering that jumble of country lanes transformed into highways for very heavy vehicles is like getting lost in a labyrinth with ten stations, each one a gigantic wind turbine to be erected in front of the great mountain of Villacidro. Water for the wind The water intakes of the Land Reclamation Consortium are proof of the billions of lire spent over the decades to irrigate the most fertile lands of the Medio Campidano. Now, few farmers are seen in these flat expanses at the crossroads between Samassi and the citrus capital. There are the German Krauts, who came to tighten bolts on the high seas, there are the modern wind energy emigrants who have come here from every latitude to "dust" the propellers and pylons.
Sheriffs and State Uniforms
Until a few days ago, here, in this strip of land militarized by security guards and "sheriffs" with helmets branded Vestas, the Danish wind turbine manufacturer, not many "really" constituted authorities had been seen. The only state uniforms that appeared on the stage were those paid by citizens to escort, at the hour of the wolves, those gigantic landscape devastators sent to Santu Miali to give the final blow to the oasis that has always been a symbol of this territory. For the rest, silence, until the end of July. The blitz is planned down to the smallest detail.
Tip-off-denunciation
The "tip-off report" had been written down in black and white by a deep connoisseur of the territory, an expert technician, a geologist by profession, Giancarlo Carboni, a municipal councilor of Villacidro. The practice that ended up in the heart of the Civil Engineering Department of the Sardinian Region was timely and detailed: on the slopes of Mount Linas the territory is being distorted, watercourses are being interrupted and obstructed, roads are being raised and road works are being carried out that were not contemplated in the projects. In short, with the silence of many, in that "middle ground", the lords of the wind were leveling an area burdened by a very heavy hydrogeological constraint, that of maximum intensity. Moreover, the wind turbines initially planned in the heart of the ban had been moved to those very small cutouts where "miraculously" the risk seemed to have disappeared. In reality, all around that network of roads built, widened and designed functionally for the wind assault, areas were being invaded that were not at all free from the hydrogeological burden. When the cars of the Civil Engineering Department of the Sardinian Region and the Forestry Department burst into the construction site, it was ten o'clock in the morning on July 30, in the year of the useless "moratorium law 2024". The investigations of the Unione Sarda had for days been documenting that upheaval of the area affected by the large wind farm of Das srl, the Piedmontese company that for years had been trying to stick those steel skyscrapers right on those lands that had always been fertile and agricultural. With the georeferenced maps in hand, the technicians-officials did not take long to immortalize the abuses that were being committed in that construction site. The technical officials of the Civil Engineering Service of Cagliari, engineers Enrico Gavaudò and Antonio Piras, burst into the scene of the abuses, with them the Commander of the Forestry, the Senior Inspector Fernando Ugas and the Chief Assistant Giuseppe Ninna of the Forestry Station of Villacidro. The report is from a few days later. When the ten pages of findings leave the headquarters of the General Directorate of the Civil Engineering it is 11:56 on August 2. The images that we report in this investigation are those found during the inspection. The findings are repeated, from the "crossing of the bed of the watercourse made of earth without installing adequate hydraulic work to allow the flow of the water current" to "new crossings of the water elements" of the entire area. In short, in order to access with heavy wind turbine vehicles they did not think twice about impacting on an area that all studies, including the Hydrogeological Planning Plan, had declared to be at high risk.
The riverbed is not to be touched
It is the Civil Engineering Department itself, in the report we have, that recalls the absolute prohibitions in that hydraulic context: "No one can carry out works in the bed of rivers, torrents, streams, public drains and canals of state property, that is, in the space between the fixed banks of the same, without the permission of the administrative authority. The branches or canals, or diversions of rivers, torrents, streams and public drains, even if they remain dry at certain times of the year, form part of the bed.' There is more: that type of works, "cannot be carried out, except with special authorization from the Ministry of Public Works, and under the observance of the conditions imposed by the same."
Everything in the Prosecutor's Office
The Civil Engineering Department's conclusion leaves no room for doubt: "For all of the above, the works detected (new crossings and adjustments to existing crossings) would appear to be illegal as they were built without the necessary hydraulic clearance from the Civil Engineering Department of Cagliari." The Forestry Department's findings confirm the crucial point of the report: "They also highlight that the findings of this inspection will be communicated to the Judicial Authority for the criminal violations that are identified."
Demolish and restore
The conclusions are all reserved for the Municipality of Villacidro: «By virtue of the above and given the surveys carried out on site by the technical officials of the Civil Engineering Service, accompanied by the Commander and the Agent of the Forestry Station of Villacidro, as well as, recalling the observations on the matter of the technical officials of the Civil Engineering Service of Cagliari, it is considered necessary to send this report to the competent technical body of the Municipality of Villacidro, responsible for building supervision, and to request the same body, likewise, to intervene with the necessary repressive measures, so that the demolition and the restoration of the state of the places are carried out». The Santu Miali dossier grows day after day. The Prosecutor's Office will now also have to evaluate the distortion of the area with respect to the hydrogeological constraint. In the meantime, the company would like to hurry. The damage to the "Landscape" of Monte Linas must be made «irreversible». The investigations, however, are not finished. The doubt is that among those lands there could also be areas burdened by civic uses
