Ships loaded with asbestos from Genoa to Carbonia

Letters for a few

From the communications in our possession, all enclosed in the confidential dossier, they have asbestos in their throats, and no longer know where to put it. The correspondence looks like a planned orchestration, with a score that in some parts is even superimposed, as if the companies of the third pass of the Giovi had agreed in advance to converge on Sardinia. Just read the communications with which the companies owning the building sites of the "Cravasco" lot contact Riverso SpA, the company of the Neapolitan Colucci family that manages the enclave of poisons in Sulcis, the Serra Scirieddus landfill. The peroration is almost a plea: you must "accept" our asbestos waste in Sardinia, in your landfill.

In the north the works

So, in short: in northern Italy large infrastructure works are being carried out, that of the third pass exceeds six billion euros, yes, exactly (6) billion, but since they don't want to keep the asbestos waste they produce, they thought well to send them to the only region of Italy that will never benefit from those works, coincidentally, precisely Sardinia. There must be a lot of money in these public works in Northern Italy if the tender specifications can envisage emptying the mountains of the Ligurian Apennines, full of asbestos, and transferring that waste to the other side of the sea, to the Island of sun and wind.

Where if not in Sardinia

They mustn't have thought about it for a single moment: where to put that asbestos waste if not in Sardinia? Said and done: the letters sent from Genoa a few months ago are lying in the safes of Riverso SpA, the company grappling with the very heavy reports of the Noe, the ecological operational unit of the carabinieri, who even found out how the measurement of the leachates from the bedrock of the hill of poisons. In the last few hours, however, all that correspondence has become the subject of an "authorization procedure", the one initiated by the Neapolitan company to obtain the green light from the Sardinian Region for the transfer of that asbestos waste to the island.

The blitz of havoc

It is 19 and 23 minutes of last April 4 when the server of the regional environmental department publishes the papers of the announced "foul" in the computer maze. The object of the "official" publication is bureaucratic: Request for use of the volumes in the authorized project and supply of evaluation elements on the extra-regional bank. The translation is simple: we ask you to use the authorized volumes of the Serra Scrieddus landfill to unload the asbestos coming from "non-regional" areas, ie precisely those of the Terzo Valico dei Giovi. To find out that the operation concerns that billion-dollar work, you have to leaf through dozens and dozens of files, until you get to the heart of the asbestos business.

"Bedeserving" of waste

Two companies write to Riverso, who then attaches them to the procedure file: the first is "Il Recupero per l'ecologia", a limited liability company from Bareggio in the province of Milan, the second is the "Htr Bonifiche" of Rome . In the incipit of the two communications, the companies are explicit: we are the holders of the contracts for the construction of the railway sections in northern Italy, in this case the Htr Reclamations, of the Single Third Pass of the Giovi Project - Genoa Junction.

Asbestos for Sardinians

Htr Reclamation writes: «These construction sites produce significant quantities of railway ballast and excavated rocks containing asbestos of natural origin. These quantities, already produced in the past, had been managed until 2019 by disposing of a significant portion at the Italian landfill of Barricalla (TO) and the remainder at large landfills in Germany. Today the contributions to the said Barricalla landfill have been eliminated because the landfill is essentially dedicated to the contributions of the contributing members only and the reclamations carried out by them, closing with respect to the contributions of third parties. Therefore today in the absence of Italian alternatives with significant spaces, the writer disposes of 100% of the aforementioned amiantiferous waste in Germany». In other words, the landfill in the north, that of Turin, reserves its spaces for operators in northern Italy, sending this waste to Germany costs too much and the principle of "proximity" is not respected. The solution, therefore, is Sardinia.

The "duty" to accept

And to formulate the request they use the most slippery of arguments: you Sardinians, in this case the Region, must accept that waste in order to comply with the law which indicates the "proximity" of the landfill to the place where the public work takes place. In practice, for these gentlemen, stating that in Italy there are no landfills authorized to receive "asbestos" constitutes an automatic obligation for the Sardinian Region to authorize this "journey" of poisons from northern Italy to Sardinia. They write it as if nothing had happened: "the writer (Htr Reclamation) intends here to represent that for the waste in question (asbestos-bearing rocks 170503* and asbestos-bearing ballast 170507*) coming from the public work in question, against the substantial closure thirds of the hazardous waste landfill of Barricalla (To), neither in the two regions covered by the work (Liguria and Piedmont), nor in the border ones and not even on the entire continental national territory, is there any landfill that could collect the waste in question with sufficient capacity for the production needs of the public work in question.

Germany & Cowgirl

For the companies that turn to Riverso, the game is simple: «In the light of the above, recourse solely to waste disposal in Germany instead of the Riverso landfill would constitute a violation of the very principle of proximity invoked and for this reason it is hypothesized that, where the Province were informed of what is reported here, precisely by virtue of the same principle of proximity, the Province could consent to the disposal in reverse limited only to the construction sites of the specific public work in question and only to the waste in question". So not only the disgrace of considering Sardinia as the dumping ground for the "carcinogenic" waste of the works in northern Italy, but also the ambition of having it as the exclusive dumping ground for the third pass of the Giovi.

Nobody wants them anymore

It is the company "Il Recupero per l'ecologia" that manages to write that no one in Europe wants that waste anymore: «Furthermore, some foreign destinations (eg Norway, Portugal, Germany and Spain) have lately slowed down or almost eliminated the release of cross-border notifications to their landfills, giving priority to national contributions". In short, nobody wants these poisons, everyone wants to safeguard their disposal spaces, from Piedmont to the main European nations, without giving anything to others. Therefore, according to this well-orchestrated direction of asbestos, all that remains is Sardinia, the dumping ground of Europe, given that no one wants asbestos from the European Alps-Rhine corridor.

The gift of the exemption

The solution proposed by Riverso and the companies sponsoring the operation is put in black and white: "a specific derogation from the limit imposed on extra-regional waste through the acts of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia and the Province of South Sardinia, by highlighting to the authorities that a derogation to the limits imposed in the authorization on extra-regional waste would fully fall within the principle of proximity on the basis of which these limits were imposed, as well as the relevant public interest".

Very private interest

It only takes the courage of these gentlemen to invoke the public interest. Both those who send and those who receive, the Riverso in this case, profit handily from these disposals of poisons, while Sardinia would not only be transformed into an asbestos landfill, but would be left without space for their own needs. Finally, Riverso and company invoke the principle of proximity, i.e. the proximity of the construction site of the Third Pass of Giovi to the nearest landfill. If geometry is not an opinion we are talking about 1000 km between roads and sea. Business and waste make Sardinia close at hand. The result can be summarized: high-speed rail in the north and beyond, waste and asbestos on the island. Last detail by April 30 you can oppose. Just write it to the Region: no asbestos in Sardinia.