The "dirty" work in Sardinia, passed off as experimental, the earnings in distant North America and Europe. Portovesme, deep in Sulcis, once again the global sewer for dangerous waste shipped to the island from the most remote industrial outskirts of the world. The garbage disposal and poison burner destined for the most devastated industrial area of Southern Sardinia, with a pass that has always been linked to the drama of work that doesn't exist.
Blackmail
Work-environment blackmail, here, in this desolately polluted land, on earth, underground, sea and air, has always been a system: state and foreign multinationals have never thought twice about making the "de profundis" of dignity in exchange for pollution and paychecks. All this until they started sending workers on layoffs to the point of firing them, to leave only environmental devastation, diseases and a population under health attack on the field with impunity.
The script
The script is always the same, this time, however, the name of the plan is a whole program: "Black Mass". We revealed this with an investigation last May when the projects of the Swiss multinational, Glencore, owner of the “Portovesme srl.” factory, were still segregated in the offices of Baar, the company's headquarters in the heart of central Switzerland. Scenario with a thousand and one questions, with one that prevailed over all: why do those dangerous wastes of lithium batteries, and not only, accumulated on the outskirts of the world, have to be sent to Sulcis?
Nobody wants them
In reality, in the world, much less in Europe, no one wanted, and wants, to take charge of an obscure experimental plant to treat that "mysterious" "black mass", full of poisons, many of which are "unknown", left to chance. It was a short step from the Swiss plan unveiled by the Sardinian Union at the end of May to the administrative procedure: last June 6th, the Sardinia Region's protocol records the request of the multinational Glencore for a «Procedure for verifying eligibility for environmental impact assessment» for the “New demonstration plant for the production of lithium carbonate and mixed metal oxides from Black Mass treatment (Li-Demo Plant)”. Everything, according to the businessmen of the metallurgical giant, had to take place on the outskirts of bureaucracy, without too much fanfare, just to keep the spotlight off the environment and health.
No "secrets"
The procedure required is in fact the one that the buildings have labeled with the most effective summary: approval on the sly. In practice the objective of “Portovesme srl.” was to avoid in any way the Environmental Impact Assessment, considered by the "powerful" to be a useless ornament of bureaucracy, a limit to environmental raids in the land of Sardinia, a waste of time compared to the totalizer of dollars that they would have liked to circulate without delay A plan to be imposed on what they consider an industrial "third world" where everything is allowed and nothing is forbidden. It went badly for them.
Eyes open
The offices of the Environmental Impact Assessment Service of the Regional Environment Department did not turn a blind eye. Faced with that project that was both superficial and full of mysterious unknowns about the industrial process, there was no alternative. The procedure for verifying eligibility for environmental assessment gave an unequivocal outcome: no shortcuts, an environmental impact assessment must be carried out without discounts and subterfuge. The "light" route requested by Glencore is rejected. In the device with which the regional councilor for the Environment Marco Porcu proposed the resolution to the regional council, approved at the end of September, new and more disturbing elements emerge, however, on a project with a thousand dark sides, starting precisely from the impact environmental.
“Black” process
It is the numbers of the "hydrometallurgical" process that make the technicians stand up: for each ton of Black Mass there are sufficient reagents to make even a neophyte chemist pale. The declination is marked by cyclopean quantities: for every 1000 kilograms of "black mass" to be treated, 880 kilograms of sulfuric acid, 75 kg of hydrogen peroxide, 730 kg of sodium carbonate, 810 of caustic soda, 4,580 liters are foreseen of demineralized water. If we consider that from the rest of the world the Swiss expected to have 11,318 tons of "Black Mass" delivered to Portovesme by ship per year, the calculations are easy to make: a real global landfill of black mass and dangerous waste, not just to say, but because they are codified as such by the laws in force.
Waste Island
The result of this “production” is an epitaph for common sense: all lithium carbonate production, 1,612 tons per year, will be sent to lithium final treatment facilities located in North America, Europe and North Africa, the metals mixed 15,339 tonnes per year to the Glencore group's storage facilities operating in Norway and Canada. What remains is the graphite waste, the one that no one needs. Glencore, coincidentally, knows how to recycle it: it will burn it as a reagent, without firing a shot, in the Waelz furnaces, replacing the anthracite and coke at the Portovesme plant.
The final waste remains
Graphite will not be the only waste to remain on Sardinian land, there will also be wastewater filtration of lithium carbonate leaving the plant to be disposed of on Sardinian land and sea, as mentioned 4,870 liters for every ton of "Black Mass" treated in the plant. We are talking about 55 million liters of water to be treated. Obviously Glencore proposes its solution: to use that "lithium" water as an auxiliary fluid in other sections of the Portovesme plant, replacing industrial water. Where will this water ultimately end up? Part of the almost 5,000 liters of process water will be absorbed by Waelz waste, 2,890 litres, and the remaining 1,240 liters will be sent to the plant's water treatment plant to then be treated in the purification plant, before being discharged love.
Sea and underground
There are not many subterfuges: in the end, a part, even if treated, will end up in the sea and another underground, in the Iglesiente landfill of Genna 'e Luas. In the regional resolution that denies the authorization shortcut, the position of the Municipality of Portoscuso is clear : «It is not considered acceptable for the effect of dilution and mixing with other wastewater coming from other third party production processes to be taken into consideration». One hypothesis, that of using the collateral industrial plants to "dispose" of the lithium process water, which reopens a dark chapter: why did Glencore lay off the workers at the Portovesme plants? Was the issue that of energy costs or, worse, an employment condition for having the lithium landfill plant approved? Nobody trusts the Swiss multinational anymore: too many reclamations not done and too many workers put in check. A project to be approved on the sly was unthinkable. The Ministry of the Environment has left no room for manoeuvre: «the presence, in liquid or gaseous emissions, of lithium and other metals or chemical substances in appreciable and variable concentrations depending on their physical-chemical composition», imposes a real and its own environmental impact assessment. With the environment and health there is no longer time for subterfuge.