They caught them without a fight. The blitz of the Noe, the ecological operational unit of the Carabinieri, that of last October 3rd, was planned down to the smallest detail. When the men of the Arma broke into Serra Scirieddus, between Gonnesa and Barega, on the promontory north of Carbonia, they knew what they were looking for. The duty manager was immediately asked to reach the spy wells, those which, to understand us, are the true thermometer of the health of the landfill. In practice, these are pipes which from the surface reach vertically the final layer of the landfill, the one under the protective sheet, or final sheath. Basically the heart of those heaps of poisons, those that Riverso, the company of the Neapolitan family of the Coluccis, has brought here from everywhere, from Campania to Sicily, from Lazio to Lombardy. A real collector of asbestos and its surroundings, all poisons sent, against all provisions, to the land already severely tested by pollution and abuses, that of Sulcis. If substances other than water come out of those pipes, the alarm should go off.
Disaster risk
It means that the landfill is "leaking", that the sheet positioned at the base of the landfill has literally "leaked". The consequences would be an unprecedented environmental disaster. In practice, if those pipes, through suction pumps, collected polluting substances at that level of depth, it would mean that those poisons are circulating, directly in the karst system of the area, or in the aquifers, always very abundant and widespread throughout the territory of the area. Sulcis. Checking those spy wells and the functioning of the depth pumps was therefore essential to understand whether or not something serious had happened under the landfill.
Pumps blocked
Many thought of a normal check, but it wouldn't have been like this. Noe's men had no desire to joke. The approach to the inspection action is understood when they declare that they want to verify the functioning of the pumps positioned under the safety sheet. The result is disastrous: coincidentally all three are blocked, they don't work. All this despite the fact that the internal management records of the landfill had recorded a diligent everything in order. The minutes had crystallized a situation opposite to reality: the wells are dry, the managers of Riverso had recorded. In that mission of the Noe you immediately understand that something is going wrong, very wrong, for the management of the landfill. The confidentiality of the investigators is total, one can only perceive what they are doing in that hill of poisons. The rest is detailed news, the one that emerges from the provision just issued by the Province of South Sardinia with which "the company Riverso is warned against the exercise of landfill activity". A real blow with the de facto stop to the coming and going of poisons which in these days was registering more copious than usual, almost as if there was an inkling of what was about to happen.
X-ray underground
The provision of the Province, signed by the manager of the Environment sector Anna Maria Congiu, requires Riverso to present, within and no later than 30 days, an exact picture on the plant and management level of what is really happening in the subsoil of the landfill. Only then will it be decided whether to definitively revoke the authorization to operate, with all that follows, starting from the safety of the entire area. The warning from the province, however, reveals the background of the Noe blitz who certainly wrote to the intermediary body and equally certainly to the competent prosecutor for any criminal offences, starting with the risk of environmental disaster, already completed or in perspective.
The judgment of the Noah
The Noe's report is in quotation marks, like a sentence without appeal: «The pumps installed inside the three spy wells under the canvas were blocked». The grave has yet to happen. The carabinieri write it explicitly: "From the operations of removal and reinsertion of the same inside the wells aimed at their correct functioning, it was ascertained that such equipment was anchored at a height greater than the bottom of the well". In practice, those pumps could not suck up anything because, instead of being pushed towards the bottom, below the level of the underlay, they had been suspended in a vacuum.
Suspended in the void
What the Noe's men discover at that point is a fact of unheard-of gravity: «In this regard, due consideration must be given to the fact that the pumps, with the attached liquid transport system, have been removed and repositioned inside the holes used as wells by Riverso spa personnel at the request of the judicial police operating and that, in these phases, no obstructions were encountered or represented in the path towards the well bottom. This means that the previous height could not have been the result of random situations deriving from a potential erroneous evaluation of the heights connected to interference external to the hole, but, on the contrary, an expression of the manager's will». In practice, the carabinieri write, it was the manager who had deliberately blocked the pumps before they reached the bottom with the result that it could not have been found in any way if the landfill "leaked" poisons in the groundwater. An action that jeopardized the public health of the entire territory given that letting poisons percolate from under the landfill without intervening meant in some way attacking the groundwater in the area with all the consequences of the case.
The proof of the crime
At that point Noe's men decide to measure the distance from the pump block inside the well to the level of the underlay. The carabinieri write: «The operating personnel have in fact ascertained that the pump serving the well underlay n. 1 was anchored about 1 m from the bottom of the well, while those installed in wells under sheet no. 2 and no. 3 were anchored at about 2.80 from the bottom of the shaft». In practice positioned almost three meters from the level of the undercover, thus making it impossible to verify any type of pollution. At that point it is ordered to let the pumps go down to the bottom, especially on the well of the underlay n.3, the one furthest downstream from the landfill.
There is pollution
The outcome is the confirmation that the investigators were looking for: everything comes out from under the protective sheet and they write it: «The presence of a dark gray, thick and foul-smelling liquid has been verified in the well under sheet n. 3. Consequently, this PG took a sample of the liquid, then deposited on the same day at the ARPAS Sulcis department of Portoscuso for chemical-physical analyzes aimed at measuring the pollution parameters».
The deception
It is the reports of the police forces that confirm the seriousness of the situation, noting that the forms for verifying underground pollution, filled in by the operator, were completely different from the reality of the facts: «The condition of unsuitability of the specific environmental protection garrison , detected of the aforementioned circumstance, appeared inconsistent with that of absolute normality, however, recorded by the Manager in the document called "monitoring wells verification form under sheet mod. 14” and delivered by the Plant Manager at the time of drawing up the report of the urgent checks carried out at the spy wells under the sheet». In practice they declared that everything was fine when, instead, those measurements had never been made.
Confirmed pollution
Groundwater pollution since 27 October is a certainty: «From reading the test reports both dated 10.27.2022, several exceedances of the CSC for the groundwater matrix of Legislative Decree no. 152/06". While they're at it, the carabinieri take a look at the surface of the landfill. Also in this case the outcome is disarming: "It was also found that the Manager failed to implement the expected daily coverage of waste containing asbestos, in violation of the prescription contained in the AIA, issued to Riverso Spa". The countdown for the landfill begins today: the Province of Southern Sardinia in the just issued formal notice asks Riverso for an emergency and urgency plan to verify the extent of the disaster and how to intervene in the landfill's sub-drain water collection network. The plan must then be evaluated and eventually approved. Game all uphill, given the precedents. Finally, the carabinieri del Noe may have already sent the documents to the prosecutor's office, under the landfill there is a risk of an unprecedented environmental disaster.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
