It won't be a process like many others. The accusation is serious: having buried a mountain of waste in the lands of Planargia, 7,000 tons of sewage sludge from Puglia and mixed with cement and more. Leonardo Galleri, sole director of a company, Geco, ended up under trial, which for an entire year, from July 2019 to July 2020, transformed Magomadas, the small village on the western coast of the island, into an inferno of devastating miasmas.
Sewer hell
In an instant the charming center of the upper Oristano area had been transformed into the crossroads of a massive traffic of trucks overloaded with putrid sewage waste shipped to Sardinia from the distant Apulian region. A millionaire turnover, for sewage waste which had been banned in Puglia, complete with judicial measures which had closed every possible hypothesis of disposal in that Region. A tangle of companies and intermediaries, all handsomely rewarded by Acquedotto Pugliese, the company that managed the purifiers of the main urban areas, including those around the most polluted area, that of Ilva in Taranto. The Public Prosecutor Marco De Crescenzo, after having studied the case, had said stop: seizure, still in force, of that plant where Geco wanted to transform, as if by magic, those sewage residues into fragrant goodness. It went badly for him. . The investigating judge, complete with very serious charges, sends the company administrator to trial: Geco illegally disposed of that sewage sludge which was considered waste in all respects, causing «harassment and inconvenience» in the towns of the area and in some cases « even health problems." Today, on the fifth half floor of the Court of Oristano, second hearing, complete with a Council Chamber, to address two preventive and decisive issues: the admission of the civil parties who appeared against that environmental massacre and Geco's dream of closing the whole match with a fine, a sort of oblation hypothesized by the law for minor crimes. On the first point, the Judge, Paola Bussu, listened to the parties behind closed doors, including Geco's brazen request to exclude all the civil parties who had asked to appear, including the Municipality of Magomadas. An inadmissible request, but which allows us to understand society's attitude towards citizens and associations: not even the right and duty to disagree. The request to exclude the committees is shattered by the Judge's verdict: all admitted, except the Adiconsum due to a formal flaw. Therefore, the Planargia Environment Committee which had led the citizens' revolt, Italia Nostra, the Legal Intervention Group, the Municipalities of Magomadas, Tresnuraghes, Flussio and Tinnura are fully involved in the judicial proceedings. A very hard blow for Geco who thought they would kill everyone without confrontation. Even the second question, entirely procedural, again posed by Geco, did not end as hoped by the lawyers of the company dedicated to the reception of sewage sludge from Puglia in Sardinia. The company's claim was clear: to resolve everything with a request for oblation, a fine that is usually reserved for anyone who throws a garbage bag from the car. The lords of the sewage sludge were not satisfied, however, with paying a fine, but also asked the Judge to release the plants and areas still under seizure. Even in this case it didn't go well: both the prosecutor and the judge made it clear that the "package" proposed by Geco, oblation and release from seizure, does not exist in the legal system.
Dangerous precedent
In this case, however, as the lawyers of the civil parties have pointed out, it is something completely different, given the damage that has continued for over a year reported by citizens and found in the significant gravity of the facts, including the immense quantities of buried waste ascertained by the consultants Public Prosecutor's Office technicians. An oblation, the committees and associations have reiterated, as the company requests, would mean a license for anyone to do the same. A devastating precedent for the "scented" land of Sardinia. New hearing on December 18th. At that point the process could get underway. At stake is the risk of an unlimited license to bury sewage sludge among the vineyards of Planargia and beyond. An environmental disaster predicted for the island.