The ISAB of Priolo (SR), owned by the Russian LUKOIL since 2008, should close its
doors on 5 December. All those who for years, defying blackmail, mafia attacks,political and union connivance, disinformation and threats of all kinds, havefought in vain to obtain this result can only rejoice. ---- "Reclamation" and"reconversion" were the watchwords of the great popular demonstration (over40,000 citizens who spontaneously took to the streets together withrepresentatives of hundreds of groups and solidarity struggle committees from allover the island), held on April 24, 2009, "against the G8 Environment inSyracuse", which had made the ISAB plant the emblem of environmental struggles inSicily. Those claims have always accompanied the unequal struggle which since1958, the year of the establishment of the first "cathedrals in the desert" ofSicilian chemistry, has been undertaken not only by the populations of theSyracuse area, but also of Termini Imerese, Milazzo, It freezes and even, theonly agitation that was successful, of Trapani, to preserve some of the mostadmired stretches of coast and sea on the island from devastation. Claims thatclashed with the coalesced interests of speculators, serial polluters neverpunished, colluding politicians and trade unions of a super-guaranteed workingclass, which has never really taken charge of the serious health andenvironmental problems that those establishments have caused in the theirsixty-year history.In 2009, it was an easy game for the then Berlusconi environment minister,Stefania Prestigiacomo, in a clear conflict of interest (her family owns acompany that supplies services to establishments in the Syracuse area), to rejectthe protests of the square: only a short time later, he hurried, trumpeting thenews from the rooftops, a purification plant that never really went intooperation, as reported by the Report broadcast on Monday 28 November, for whichreason today - closing or not of the ISAB - a large part of the industrial area,including ISAB, is at serious risk of being seized. The Priolo-Melilli-Augustaindustrial hub like the ILVA of Taranto: is the start of a new great squanderingof public money and political-judicial intrigues to keep alive a plant that isindefensible from any side you look at it?It is strange today to listen to the magistrates of Syracuse finally proposingthe seizure of ISAB - and in this way lightening the responsibilities ofgovernments for the defaults, collusions and manifest incapacities of the past -when as early as 9 March 2010 a sentence of the European Court of Justice - nevercarried out by the Italian judiciary - sentenced him to "repair for theascertained pollution" in the territory of Priolo. Yet in that area and in theharbor of Augusta groundwater analyzes - in the public domain - recordedconcentrations above the limit values (over 130 times for arsenic, 50 times formercury, 200,000 times for benzene ...) - undoubtedly caused by refiningactivities and industrial discharges into the sea.The question is the same as ILVA: to protect employment, even if in factories ofdeath - harmful to the workers themselves and their families - or to preserve thehealth of hundreds of thousands of citizens who live in neighboring territories?To this must be added the atavistic tendency of the refinery tycoons to evadepublic controls, cut management costs to the bone, evade the purificationobligation, cheat the taxman, etc.), with the condescension of the political andunion. But today two more are added to the "ancient" question: continuing toimport and refine oil and its derivatives when they come directly or indirectlyfrom a belligerent nation, helping to finance its war of aggression againstUkraine, and when plans for ecological transition already foresee - in a shorttime - the divestment of the supply of hydrocarbons from fossil sources?What has been done so far in this perspective? Why was the decommissioning andreconversion of the ISAB plant and the entire industrial area of Priolo notplanned, and instead it was expected that the sanctions of the European Communityand the seizures of the judicial authority would do so? Did they perhaps expectfurther derogations from Brussels, pardons from Rome, ad hoc laws from Palermo?Or is it hoped to be able to insert polluting and dangerous "latest generation"plants (waste-to-energy plants, regasification plants, nuclear power plants,etc.) in the area, which is still subject to military servitude (includingnuclear servitude)? As we write, the Italian and regional governments are in factrushing - with delay and carelessness that mask the real interest by which theyare animated - to the bedside of this gigantic plant, which over the years hasdispensed with water and air pollution, deaths on the job, tumors, evildeformations of local populations (some of which have even suffered "deportation"to areas considered healthier), not to find a way to close it definitively,provide for the necessary reclamation and re-employment of the employed, but totry with impunity to save it. And not because the fate of an all in all modestworkforce weighs on them compared to the enormous agricultural and touristpotential that the area would offer once it has been restored, but to continue,thanks to the emergency decree, to squander public money in favor of a privatelobby, that of the oilmen, among the most hungry and omnipotent in Italy. Thereare two hypotheses in the field: nationalization, highly improbable, and puttingthe workers on "stand-by", waiting for better solutions.According to data from ISAB itself, still in the summer of 2021, this wouldemploy no more than 1,000 direct employees and "about" 1,500 from relatedindustries, figures that are already pumped up, compared to the 10,000 totalindicated by the regime press these days; while in subsidies for purificationthat has never been carried out - only one of its many assets - 223 million euroshave been committed by the State in the last twenty years, which could have beenmuch more usefully employed in serious land reclamation and reconversion works ofthe establishment. Now, why not immediately employ this workforce for thereclamation of the area, its redevelopment and renaturalization, the creation ofgreen and clean work in it? Why not make the former industrial center a virtuousexample of socio-environmental recovery, without first having to go through thoseprevarications, business shenanigans and jokes that characterized two otherabandoned industrial areas in Sicily: Termini Imerese and Gela? For the good ofall, those places once a dream holiday destination must be returned to common useimmediately.Musarra Christmashttps://www.sicilialibertaria.it/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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