A "holy war" between large Cagliari families, a very harsh appeal on airport poisons and omissions put in black and white complete with a notary seal, real estate deals, public & private intrigues. The old Fas, the Ferriere Acciaierie Sarde, at the entrance to Cagliari airport, is no longer there. Razed to the ground, disappeared like snow in the sun, 62 years after the beginning of that metallurgical history. Since 1994 it had stopped churning out iron and steel, becoming over the years a pile of poisons and a ruin of industrial archaeology.

Elmas Atocha demolished

Stuff to make the ancient and imposing Atocha train station, in the heart of Madrid, envious, according to the creators of the first conversion plan of the building. And, to tell the truth, the first project, the one initially authorised, in force until a few months ago, envisaged the protection and valorisation of those "identity-industrial" buildings. Then, however, in recent months, out of the blue, the sudden change of strategy and project: from an "archaeological" asset to be subjected to "protection" to a useless building to be demolished without wasting too much time. So it was. Almost with a blitz, lightning-fast, without second thoughts, in an instant thousands of cubic meters were transformed into a forty-hectare clearing, between the airport and the first gate of Cagliari, the one towards Elmas. After all, there was no time to waste: on that stage loom the large commercial chains, from Ikea to Leroy Merlin, all ready to devour new spaces and revenues at full speed. Behind this story, however, lie many mysteries and a thousand questions.

The open chapters

There are environmental issues, first of all. However, airport issues are also looming, with all the implications linked to the compatibility of the area with a shopping center of that size, the obvious overlaps of traffic flows at the entrance to the regional capital are advancing without hesitation, such as to constitute a barrier of cars and vehicles destined to forever influence the connection of the metropolitan area with the most important infrastructure on the island, the Cagliari airport. In short, there is enough to have to deal with the authorization documents, the bureaucratic process, the project upheaval and the contradictory positions expressed by the competent bodies, first very rigid in denying authorizations and then, instead, ready to grant everything and more . There are many documents that dot the controversial history of this colossal deal to be consummated on the outskirts of Cagliari. An urban building intervention destined to forever overturn a delicate and sensitive area, such as the entrance to a large city. There are at least four indelible acts that shine the spotlight on this operation. The first: the request for project alteration forwarded to the Region by "Villa del Mas", the company that owns that area and what were the Fas buildings, presented on 19 May last year. The second: the very heavy initial judgment of the Region's officials on that project of radical modification of the plan. The third: the very harsh opposition presented by another company which denounces all the risks of that new project. The fourth: an initial and formal refusal by ENAC to offload the traffic of the future shopping center onto the airport's "emergency" road, so to speak the one where the emergency vehicles would have to pass in the event of an accident with the sudden change of position of the state body. Chapters with many paragraphs and infinite interests, all put in black and white, documented and verified.

The treadmill

Added to this is an unpublished fact, also put in black and white, revealed in recent days by the owners of the former Fas area: the shopping center will be connected directly to the airport via a moving walkway. Not a trivial statement, given that the Cagliari airport, until proven otherwise, is and still remains a public infrastructure, which in no way can be transformed into a driving force for private business. It is difficult to think of an "astral" convergence in all this vortex of private affairs, given that attempts have been made to privatize the Cagliari airport for two years now.

Public & private affairs

A chapter, that of the sale of the first Sardinian airport to private individuals, which does not appear marginal, given the "implications" declared by the owners of the former Fas themselves, precisely on the direct connection between the airport and the planned commercial structure. “Implications” that multiply when one analyzes the names and surnames of the “owners” of the steelworks, of the holders of the public shares of the airport company, of the directors of the potential buyers of the private funds and of the designers of so much “commercial work”, conceived to "connect" the Ikea & company counters directly with the Elmas "gates" using sliding belts.

First chapter, demolition

Let's start, in summary, from the first chapter: design variant with demolition of all the former industrial structures and capping , i.e. the covering with burial and tarpaulin of the entire area subject to the intervention, forever burying those lands soaked in every kind of chemical waste -physicist of the former steelworks. A plan which, in fact, overturns the initial one which envisaged the "saving" of all the structures of the old production site considered to all intents and purposes a site of "industrial archaeology". Therefore, everything is changing radically because - according to what the owners declare - «the dialogues established between the ownership and some future potential tenants have determined the need to review the entire distribution layout and the external image of the buildings to meet the needs of some brands of large-scale retail trade". In other words, we demolish everything because the "masters" of world trade ask us to. From the vaunted features of the "Atocha Station" to a square warehouse it is a short and convenient step. The total reversal of the project, however, calls into question the previous authorizations, including the Environmental Assessment.

Doubts about the environment

The "Environmental Assessment Service" of the regional Department does not feel like closing its eyes and letting that overwhelming intervention like replacing a house lock pass. First of all, it asks to activate the procedure to verify whether the new intervention is subject to EIA. The Region's arguments for this first step , however, are very harsh. In those premises, many read the obligation to subject the entire operation to a new "evaluation". Inside the Department, however, they seem to have two speeds: on the one hand those who are in a hurry to authorize and on the other those who want to see clearly. The "sensational" variant project was presented on 19 May 2023, just six days later, on 25 May, with a sprinter's timing, the process to grant the green light was started. In the meantime, however, the "Service" puts on paper a train of problems destined, in theory, to blow up that sudden change of strategy. The “rosary” of problems is without appeal.

Overturned project

The report writes: «the changes to the recently approved Reclamation Operational Plan involve the significant contribution of materials from outside; new evaluation of the compatibility of the intervention with the airport restriction; topographic modification and raising of the finished levels with significant addition of materials from the outside not evaluated during the Via; use of natural resources for the embankments due to the new and greater needs not assessed during the Via; greater and significant quantities of waste materials not evaluated during the EIA and evaluation of the related expected environmental impacts; potential interactions with surface and groundwater in light of the proposed design changes."

The inconsistency

These arguments would be enough to send the new project to via, but the Service is not satisfied and unleashes other lethal blows: «inconsistency between the new project hypothesis of demolishing the existing buildings and that of the redevelopment of the same chosen during the VIA following the evaluation precise of all the negative aspects connected to the demolition which led to discarding the demolition in favor of the redevelopment". In short, in the first project it was argued that keeping those "archaeo-industrial" buildings standing would have had significant environmental and strategic value, but now, without hesitation, the exact opposite is being argued. Even for the most imaginative expert in creative planning it would not have been easy to say that authorizing the restoration of that building would also mean authorizing its demolition. Yet, so it was. In the end the Regional Council, in a completely singular way, decided to "exclude" the distorted project from the EIA, a green light with many questions, starting from that document full of observations deposited in the Region by one of the great Cagliari families to open eyes on what happens in the old steel mill.

The construction site is underway

In the meantime, the Elmas construction site is moving forward. There is an avalanche of land to cover on which it is not recommended to grow strawberries. The images we publish are eloquent, with the stratigraphy of the dark materials of the former steelworks speaking for themselves. The rule is to hurry. Down there, however, according to the objections presented to the project, there would be a volume of 64,000 cubic meters of land that does not comply with the Risk Threshold Concentrations. This, however, is another chapter, all to be told, with notarial deeds and stamps.

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