When they bought them they certainly weren't thinking about sowing wheat. In those years, in those straw-colored soils like the wheat of the largest granary in Italy, in the quadrilateral between Samatzai, Serrenti, Nuraminis and Furtei, the only income was that of hard country work. Agriculture and livestock, recited the economic geography of the past years. The dream of the oil Eldorado did not lodge in the minds of those in the countryside who knew both sunrise and sunset. Yet, in 1961, at the dawn of the industrial rebirth, in those same lands, the drilling rigs of Wintershall AG, a company from Hanover in charge of searching for oil in the geological explorations between the “formation” of Samassi and that of Ussana, appeared. The Germans drill as hard as they can those valleys in the countryside of Samatzai, filled, in millennia of evolution of the earth, by yellowish gray sandstones and mainly clayey "cement". The “Campidano 1” well for Sardinian oil exploration, located thirty kilometers from Cagliari, was part of a plan of the Region which at the time dreamed of crude oil and barrels.
No oil
They won't find anything. However, the Italcementi colossus, through Ital Real Estate, an apparent modest limited liability real estate company, takes care of land shopping, between nuraghi and domus de janas. A few kilometers from what will be one of the most important cement plants in Italy, already established in the barren plain near the town of Samatzai, the powerful company, now 100% German, controlled by Italcementi Heidelberg, has bought a few tens of hectares of land apparently functional only for grazing and agricultural production. The real reasons for those trades, however, are other. Less noble and devastating.
Augers & excavators
After the oil drills of fearless memory, two years ago, in fact, in those lands burned with impunity, not by time, the excavators of the Cagliari Public Prosecutor's Office arrived, sent to the trenches by the prosecutor Giangiacomo Pilia, a magistrate struggling with one of the most obscure of the colonial pollution of Sardinia. The dossier is hot, there are powerful and business at stake, environmental devastation and destruction of natural habitats. The Piazza Repubblica investigator went down without fail. The men of the Carabinieri Ecological Operational Unit, and even before the Nuraminis station, had rounded up evidence and samples, photographs and videos, testimonies and irrefutable evidence. The first report is from an anonymous committee. There is fear of reprisals. Pollution & work on this island marred by unprecedented environmental violence go hand in hand. If you want to work you have to accept the blackmail of pollution and that of health. The investigators, however, know who is behind that committee that tries to bring out a truth that many would like to keep segregated in the silence of disease and decay. They knock on the doors of at least three people who finally put their faces on it. They talk and tell everything they know.
The videos of the poisons
The third of the "brave citizens" went further: he documented everything. The trucks, the bulldozers, the landfills and the covers, all functional to hide that mountain of poisons slapped underground with impunity. Not a few bags of industrial garbage, already deplorable in itself, but a real transformation of the territory with mountains of dangerous substances that change the morphological, water and naturalistic balances of the area. The carabinieri acquire everything, the pollution album is teeming with crimes. The filmmaker of poisons has immortalized everything, he imprinted those bloody actions in hundreds of photos and videos. In the documentary sequences there are the crucial moments in which the trucks left the industrial plant to then unload that waste in the open countryside, in many cases classified as dangerous. It is January 2018 when the Noe, with the carabinieri of Nuraminis, go to the place, in the locality of Su Nuraxi, in the countryside of Samatzai. They don't need the drone. You can see a mile away that the area is devastated by excavations and fillings done well and better, with industrial materials of all kinds and colors emerging on the surface.
Massive investigation
The magistrate wastes no time: he signed the kidnappings, ten in all. The areas are fenced and off-limits. It is the beginning of a massive investigation, which is accusing one of the most powerful companies in the world in the field of the production of the "oil" of construction, cement. Company with swollen turnover of earnings, with a conscience charged with layoffs and layoffs. So powerful that they think they can go unpunished in front of armored accusations, punctuated by the Cagliari prosecutor in the request for indictment just signed, a few days ago, by Giangiacomo Pilia. Heavy accusations for all the leaders of the Samatzai cement plant, supported by a technical consultancy to make the veins in the wrists tremble. The document leaves no way out. Circumstantiated and punctual, without extenuating circumstances for that havoc consumed in the land of wheat. The sequence of events is documented. Any illegal landfill marked with maps and poisons.
Tsunami
A real bombardment of pollutants, scattered everywhere in this valley of cement and devastation. It goes from north to south of the plant, with dedicated and fenced roads, all within the industrial site and then lead, as if nothing had happened, in the open countryside. The road to reach the apotheosis of this colonial assault on the Campidano lands is jagged like an extreme rally. When you arrive at " Su Linnarbu ", a stone's throw from the Nuraghe that stands on the outskirts of the town of Samatzai, in the open countryside, you realize that a tsunami has passed over those lands. Nothing grows, the rock grass and junipers are a mirage here, on the grounds of Ital Real Estate. And they have good reason for plant and animal species to pass by. In that expanse of twenty hectares, owned by the now totally German company, the excavators of the Prosecutor's Office have not been able to find the end of those heaps of poisons. Vertical end, so to speak, since that mountain of poisons has marked depths of up to 12 meters. The trenches opened by the mechanical means sent by the Prosecutor's Office, however, have turned upside down the plans for concealing those poisons.
Underground and covered
In this area, with a very conservative downward estimate, 200 thousand cubic meters of poisons have been calculated, discharged and hidden in the ground, shamelessly. Underground and then covered. The evidence is overwhelming: "The images - it is written in the minutes - document how Italcementi had just placed landfill over the waste, it is believed to have the clear purpose of hiding it." They paid no attention to anything, covering even springs and streams with rubbish. Pm consultant, engineer Paolo Littarru, writes: "The alteration of the plant ecosystem seems evident even in the vicinity of the trenches built downstream of the waste heap where the Mitza Surri spring and part of the Rio Surri bed have been covered ". Unprejudiced, without appeal. The consultant writes again: «The heap of waste insists, in fact, on the waters of the spring that easily came to light as a result of the excavations during the investigations. Under normal conditions the spring would have supplied water throughout the year ».
Arsenic and lead
The analyzes of the soils and waters in that area are devastating: above the legal thresholds arsenic, cadmium, lead, selenium and thallium are recorded. The Consultant's final report, for the most impressive area of this unprecedented environmental degradation, answers in the affirmative to the Magistrate's question: "The waste found in the subsoil pertaining to the Italcementi SpA plant caused environmental pollution, with consequent compromise and deterioration significant and measurable soil and water ». With an aggravating black-and-white note: "... at least partially the conditions referred to in the case of environmental disaster characterized by massive contamination of sites by accumulation on the territory and pouring into the waters of large quantities of highly dangerous special waste". The damage is accomplished, serious, perhaps irreversible.
Twenty million reclamations
The Public Prosecutor moves forward. In the consultant's report he asks for an assessment of the remediation costs. The figures only partially show the extent of the damage: if the disposal of those poisons took place in Sardinia, if the Sardinian landfills had the capacity, the cost would exceed 20 million euros. If, on the other hand, other landfills off the island were to be used, the outlay would be 26 million euros. For now there is the request for indictment and the date of the hearing set by Judge Maria Gabriella Muscas for February 22, 2022.
The defendants
There will be the accused accused in various ways of having made landfills of waste including dangerous in the absence of authorization, continuing over the years in the burying activity, causing environmental disasters and danger to public safety. Responsible for this will be based on key roles in the plant Salvatore Grimaldi Capitello, Ignazio La Barbera, Lorenzo Metullio, Giuseppe Cataldo, Basilio Putzolu. The criminal proceedings are also against Italcementi Fabbriche Riunite Cemento SpA, a global giant that did not sow wheat, did not look for oil in the Campidano land, but, according to the investigators, buried poisons, polluting the soil and water sources.
