"I pray for the remediation of contaminated sites". When Pope Francis
addressed the apostolic greeting to the committees of Livorno andCollesalvetti, who came to attend the Sunday blessing of the monarch in
white, some rejoiced: finally, with this gesture, there could be an
acceleration in remediation. ---- Since I have been dealing with the
issue - more than 15 years - I have heard talk of accelerations.
Decisive, decisive, concrete. And, obviously, never seen before. What I
have learned in this very long period of time is that remediation in
Italy has become like Eduardo Galeano's utopia: a horizon to aim for
that is never reached, which serves to keep walking. Except that in the
dramatic reverse of this story, remediation is a utopia useful only to
perpetuate a worn-out and rotten mechanism that serves to feed a
perverse mix of bureaucratic obstacles, industries to be preserved, fake
controls, useless debates. On the shoulders of sacrificed territories,
now irremediably contaminated, and of people for whom the fate of "never
ending sentence" applies.
However, we need to take a step back to try to have a better
understanding. Together with a clarification: here we will only deal
with SIN, the Sites of National Interest for Remediation, that is, the
territories where the state itself recognizes that environmental
contamination is taking place. By contaminated site, ISPRA, that is, the
Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, indicates
"all those areas in which, following previous or ongoing human
activities, an alteration of the qualitative characteristics of the
environmental matrices soil, subsoil or underground water has been
ascertained such as to represent a risk to human health". These are the
places, in practice, that were chosen to be sacrificed on the altar of
Italy's economic growth during the twentieth century, when industrial
capitalism, which arose from the ruins of the two world wars, covered
the entire peninsula with coal power plants, petrochemical plants, steel
mills, power plants, cement factories, incinerators. A poisoned
geography, as journalist Rita Cantalino defines it, that spares no one.
If you look at the map of SIN - there are currently 42 - you discover
that it concerns every region of Italy, with the exception of Molise,
but only because the SIN of Guglionesi has been downgraded to SIR (Site
of Regional Interest). A widespread distribution because the myth of
development has not looked and does not look anyone in the face, and
indeed every single plant has always been passed off as a bearer of
general progress and well-being for the population. We know how it went:
the myth of Italy's industrial power, which has been in decline for at
least 30 years, has proven to be not only a narrative palliative but
also the most formidable tool of blackmail for those who have tried and
are trying to oppose it, under the banner of opposition between health
and work, and the annihilation of every possible alternative from below.
Because once the territory is compromised, it is difficult, if not
impossible, to even imagine an environmental, social and cultural
regeneration.
As Rita Cantalino recalls, "today the SINs cover 177,268 hectares of our
country's surface, to which are added the 77,733 hectares of marine
areas. This is almost 0.6% of the national territory: it may seem like
little but in reality it is almost 1800 square kilometers. It is as if
the surfaces of Rome (1,285 km²), Naples (119 km²), Milan (181.8 km²)
and Palermo (158.9 km²) were completely contaminated. To this figure
must be added that of the water and that of the SIR, adding which the
percentage is close to 3%. In these territories, 10% of the national
population lives, that is, about six million people". And yet, despite
these impressive numbers, there is still too little talk about the SIN
and the need for remediation. This is done because the SIN are
considered marginal territories, now lost, where people live who, not
living in metropolises like Rome or Milan, are worth less. Even if for
decades they have recorded above-average levels of tumor incidence and
mortality, as attested by numerous epidemiological studies, the most
authoritative of which is Sentieri, the National Epidemiological Study
of Territories and Settlements Exposed to Pollution Risk, produced by
the Istituto Superiore di Sanità.
Now in its sixth edition, the Sentieri study is the emblem of how the
state knows everything but deliberately chooses not to act, preferring
to "monitor" without ever solving anything. Thank goodness, in the
latest edition of the study, dating back to 2023, environmental justice
is discussed but without words being followed by actions. At most, the
opposite is true: the national legislation on the remediation of
contaminated sites, introduced with ministerial decree no. 471 of 1999,
was profoundly modified by legislative decree no. 152 of 2006, which
later became the Consolidated Environmental Act and recently modified by
the Meloni government, which even provides for the exclusion of
environmental impact assessment for some types of plants and, in a
mirror-like manner, cosmetic changes to remediation, obviously "without
new or greater burdens on public finances", these wretches of the Sites
of National Interest do not deserve any investment. Just say you are
interested, then who cares about the rest.
All this applies even more intensely to the 4 Sicilian SINs:
Biancavilla, Gela, Milazzo and the Priolo/Augusta/Melilli triangle.
Here, remediation is so far away that even ARPA, the Regional Agency for
Environmental Protection, calls it "a mirage" in an official document
dating back to 2019. Some argue that we need a national structure,
within the Ministry of the Environment, dedicated exclusively to
contaminated sites, that can independently manage resources, personnel
and skills, instead of navigating a very complicated maze of missed
responsibilities and funds that it is not clear who should pay out.
In 2021, the UP network had proposed using a part of the National
Recovery and Resilience Plan, that is, the almost 200 billion that in
theory should have triggered Italy's ecological transition, to care for
the environment and people in the 42 SINs. An appeal that went unheard,
not even embraced by the environmentalist galaxy, which makes it clear
that a reformist approach is useless. The state does not want to carry
out remediation because it fears the consequences. Completing the
remediation of the SIN would mean defining the industries responsible
for the pollution, without them being able to resort to their squalid
expedients of escapes from the territories, changes of ownership,
controlled bankruptcies and financial tricks. It would mean enforcing
the principle "the polluter pays", established at European and Italian
level but never implemented. It would mean stopping feeding the trough
of consultancies, scientific studies, legal appeals, service
conferences, crisis areas, community funds. It would mean admitting the
irreversibility of pollution, where rather than remediation we should
focus on safety, so that the territories are returned to use without,
however, dreaming of improbable parks or amazing regenerations. It would
mean starting the largest public care operation in Italy, because
treating those who live in the SIN would require structural projects and
prodigious investments that would have to be taken away from industries
and armaments. In this sense, the remediation is truly a utopia. But
that is precisely why it must be pursued.
Andrea Turco
http://sicilialibertaria.it
_________________________________________
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