More than a sentence it is a tombstone. Written with legal surgery and printed in the annals of jurisprudence with the heavy mallet of a club with no return. With record speed, the Sardinian Tar wasted no time in decreeing the end of that endless caravan of waste that in recent years has filled the bowels of the Sardinian land and filled entire hills with "foreign" poisons, sent to the Nuraghi Island. from every remote corner of the peninsula.
Verdict
The verdict has the signature at the bottom of the number one of the Administrative Court of Sardinia, Dante D'Alessio, President with kind ways and decisions without retro thoughts. With him, in the judicial panel of Piazza del Carmine, seat of the administrative affairs tribunal, are Antonio Plaisant, councilor judge and Tito Aru, drafter of the sentence, the one who leaves no way out to the landfill lords, gathered in an unlikely conciliation before the administrative magistrates. The decision just published in the judicial protocol is a shot at the vain claims of the giants of poisons to be imported into Sardinia. The synthesis does not need frills: it is illegitimate to transport waste from the Continent to Sardinia because it violates a founding and inviolable principle of environmental law, that of the proximity of waste and the obligation to minimize the movement of poisons from the places of production.
Tirso & Padania
To translate the sentence unequivocally, no shortcuts are needed: considering Sardinia as "proximity" to Lombardy or Lazio, Campania or Veneto, is like saying that the Tirso River is contiguous to the Po Valley. The result for the administrative judges is carved in the final device: the appeal presented by Ecoserdiana, owner of one of the largest landfills in Sardinia, and supported "ad adiuvandum" by the partner Riverso SpA, owner of the hill of poisons between Carbonia and Gonnesa, " must be rejected ". In reality, the judges also suggested, with the grace of the law, that it was better for the "actors" of the appeal to let it go, and to cancel the appeal for cessation of interest. The lords of Ecoserdiana, on the other hand, supported by the powerful Colucci family, owners of the Riverso, wanted at all costs a pronouncement by the administrative magistrates. They had it in record time: rejected. After all, the object of the dispute was not a small game. The Sardinian Region, with its own deed, had approved the expansion of the landfill that stands between Su Siccesu and S'Arenaxiu, in the countryside of Serdiana, in the heart of the Parteolla. Approval with an annotation as sharp as a gallows: it is forbidden to dispose of waste from outside the region, i.e. no poisons from other Italian regions, to the landfill.
Stop at the slot machine
For the waste slot machine it meant eliminating from the circuit an interminable and inexplicable flow of all kinds of poisons sent to the land of olive trees to be buried without too many preliminaries. Basically an impressive flow of money that was transforming Sardinia into a real Fort Knox of poisons, shipped with impunity to the island by ship, from north, central and south Italy. The appeal of the gentlemen of Ecoserdiana & C., to the Court of Piazza del Carmine, was not long in coming.
They wanted to undo everything
According to the owners of the cyclopean landfill of Serdiana, it was not only necessary to cancel the note of the Regional Department of the Environment with which the authorization to transport waste from other Regions to Sardinia was denied, but also to render ineffective the resolution of the Regional Council with which in December 2012 the regional special waste plan was approved. In short, the landfill lords aimed to make a clean sweep of all the rules and regulations that opposed the landing on the continent's poison island. To support Ecoserdiana in the judicial dispute of life, that of landfills, even Riverso SpA takes the field, the Colucci company that in the past has tried to get its hands on the same Serdiana landfill, complete with a sale and purchase proposal, with figures millionaires and monopoly cravings.
Brothers knives
Between the two, according to rumors, there is no good blood, despite being mutually partners, with one percent, of their respective hills of poisons. Knives brothers, but united to the extreme when it is necessary to defend that flow of money coming from the powerful waste that from the rest of Italy hurl a caravan of poisons into Sardinia. Riverso perfectly understands that the ruling of the Tar judges on Ecoserdiana can be the final blow to stop the avalanche of hazardous waste that, in the last three years, has filled the coffers of the Colucci family. The toy, however, broke early, with the “insurance” collapse of the mountain of waste between Gonnesa and Carbonia.
They wanted a million
They have, however, miscalculated. Riverso SpA., Joining the appeal, and Ecoserdiana to ask even one million in damages to the Region. It was that request for money that nailed the garbage lords. A gamble that has not left indifferent the lawyers of the Region, Mattia Pani and Andrea Sechi, who have asked, without hesitation, the ruling of the judges, without further postponements, precisely to sanction unequivocally the principle of "proximity" that must regulate the delicate waste matter. After all, Ecoserdiana had already presented a new application to the Region to try to take advantage of a possible relaxation of that cardinal principle.
Final shot
Nothing to do, first the Region, and then the Judges, have dealt the final blow. The Atmosphere and Territory Protection Service of the Regional Environmental Department has closed its doors, both for the first and for the second instance: "The indeterminacy of the origin of the waste destined for disposal clearly contrasts with the principles of self-sufficiency and proximity that are the basis of the sector regulations and with the objectives of the Regional Plan for the management of special waste in force and the updating of the same being drawn up by this service… ».
No proximity
In practice, for Sardinia, there is no “proximity” with other Regions since it is an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, moreover, in fact, ultra-peripheral. An approach that the Region has reiterated, according to what it has stated before the judges, both for the past and for the future, given the explicit reference to the updating of the regional waste plan. Ecoserdiana and Riverso, given the unfavorable regulatory and planning framework, could renounce the decision of the TAR, instead, they asked the judges to decide, leaving standing the request for at least one million euros in damages, subject to further assessments, addressed to the Region , "Guilty", according to the applicant, of having blocked the arrival of extra-regional waste.
The wrong move
That was the move that led the judges to decide, without limiting themselves to an unexpected lack of interest. It is the judges who write it: "On the other hand, the applicant (Ecoserdiana) remains interested in the decision of the dispute in relation to the compensation claim it has proposed for having been forced to refuse, in her opinion, due to the disputed limitations, multiple proposals for collaboration advanced by some economic operators based in extra-regional territories. In fact, the appellant complains of having suffered damage quantifiable in the amount of € 1,000,000.00, or in that, less or greater, to be ascertained in the course of the case ».
Without appeal
It is here that the sentence is consumed in a denial without appeal: the Council of State, remember and share the judges of Cagliari, has recently pronounced, Section VI, sentence no. 5025 of 1 July 2021, with armored arguments that leave no room for interpretation. According to the TAR and the Council of State, from the reference regulatory framework "it emerges unequivocally how the so-called proximity criterion also applies to the management of special waste and not only to urban waste, as erroneously envisaged by the appellant (Ecoserdiana and Riverso) ". And finally the tombstone with the reference to the sentence of the European Court of Justice of 2015 (case C-653/13), which states: "It is up to each region, municipality or other local authority to adopt the appropriate measures to guarantee the reception, treatment and disposal of their own waste and that the latter must therefore be disposed of as close as possible to the place where they are produced, to limit transport as much as possible ». The TAR judges conclude: the appeal is rejected. Sardinia is off-limits for extra-regional waste. It is forbidden to bring poisons from other regions.
