The poison war has just begun. The correspondence between the Region, Arpas and the Province of Southern Sardinia is something more than a normal correspondence between public bodies. What emerges from a correspondence we have come into possession of is a real clash on the management, and on the controls, in the hill of poisons between Gonnesa and Carbonia. There, now, the hazardous waste landfill is closed. All workers at home, sent without too many compliments on layoffs and replaced by four private vigilantes.

76 niet

There are relevant issues at stake: on the one hand the silences on the certifications on that massive traffic of waste arrived, without authorization, from the rest of Italy, and on the other hand the future of that landfill remained uninsured, given that as many as 76 insurance companies they refused to give an audience to the Riverso. Non-existent guarantees that led to the lockout, with an immense danger for the entire territory, given that the Bulgarian company that had stipulated the policy in 2016 was banned internationally. It had to guarantee not only the safe closure of the site, but also the monitoring, for thirty years, of those millions of tons of poisons. The game gets tough on these two important issues. To contend for it there is not only the Riverso, but also the underground clash between public subjects. In recent days the dispute between the Region and the Province of Southern Sardinia has become explosive. The Regional Department of the Environment wants clarity on controls and monitoring of that waste traffic, reported by our newspaper at the beginning of 2021, with those disturbing images of trucks loaded with asbestos, and not only, disembarked from ships and headed towards Serra Scirieddus .

Crossfire

The first missive of the crossfire is from last September 24th. Protocol 24215. It is the Region, holder of environmental responsibility, which writes to the Province, administrative manager of the landfill control. The reconstruction is all aimed at that load of poisons never revealed: what did those bigbags, large white sacks with the asbestos "A" imprinted in red, carry on their journey, first by ship and then on the SS.130, towards Carbonia? One thing is certain: those samples have never been completely analyzed, according to what the Region writes and the Province confirms, because the owners of the landfill, and some producers, have declared them " not representative ". The Region writes in its letter recalling the inspection visit to the landfill immediately after that load of poisons: "The aliquots of waste samples that the manager keeps and makes available for any checks by the competent authorities, acquired on 18 February 2021 , consisted of limited quantities of waste for which it was possible to perform only transfer tests to verify the limits set out in table five…, while in the investigation program the verification of compliance with annex seven was also provided for ". The Region expressly says so: the samples could not be analyzed because the Riverso did not keep a sufficient quantity to guarantee the complete examination of the waste unloaded in landfills. Therefore, that sample of poisons, transported by sea and along the Cagliari - Sulcis axis, up to the "hole" of Monti Onixeddu, had not been preserved in such a way as to be verified according to the rules of the law. In practice, those stored samples were found to be useless to carry out the complete panel of analyzes required by current legislation on waste. It is here that the Region, in the letter we are in possession of, puts in black and white the request for sanctions because one of the key steps in the control of waste has failed, the conservation of samples in order to carry out, within a year, the necessary checks.

Violations & penalties

The Region writes: "It wonders if this Province has adopted measures in this regard, considering that the samples were not taken in such a quantity as to allow the execution of the entire analytical panel envisaged and, therefore, this did not allow the control bodies to fully carry out the functions attributed to them ... ". It is September 27th when the intermediate body of Southern Sardinia communicates: "No provisions have yet been issued as the Arpas has not highlighted in the final results the non-compliance with the prescriptions contained in the authorization framework". In practice, the Province and Arpas itself would not want to raise the legal sanctions to the Riverso, as requested by the Region, because in the prescription of the Integrated Authorization there would be, according to them, a generic definition of "sample" of poisons to be stored in landfills . And they get to write it: "In fact, the drafting of the current Aia prescription did not allow this administration to make any remarks to the Riverso company, as the prescription speaks of a" sample "and not a" representative sample ", and having to correctly applying the definitions contained in the Uni regulations it is clear that from this point of view nothing is objectionable on the part of the operator regarding the failure to comply with the Aia prescriptions ». The response of the Province sends the offices of the Region into a rage. Daniela Manca, director of the service for the protection of the atmosphere and the territory of the regional councilorship, responds in kind. It is last October 6th. The letter is fulminant: "The request for this Service concerns the fact that the authority in charge of the control, on the occasion of the inspection visit of 18 February 2021, was unable to fully perform the functions provided for by the legislation ...". The note takes on the tones of a harsh and detailed reprimand, but also adds a consideration of logic and minimal common sense: "In fact, it is not clear what the purpose of taking and storing the samples could be other than to allow the repetition of the entire analytical panel by the competent control authority in order to verify the compliance of the waste with the criteria for admissibility to landfill ".

Review your decisions

The letter ends with a provision without preamble: "This administration is asked to review its assessments regarding compliance by the operator with the requirements of the Integrated Environmental Authorization". But that's not all. The Region provides that Arpas verifies "whether the other samples, taken by the operator and stored in the plant for a period of not less than two months and / or 12 months, are not representative ...". At stake, therefore, there is a very delicate game, which concerns the poisons buried in Monti Onixeddu. The managers who had to keep the samples of that waste according to law did not do so and at the appropriate time, during the verification phase, they declared that those fractions of waste, which they kept, were in fact useless because they were " not representative ". The Region will not have to wait long to get the answers on the rest of the samples. The administrator of the Riverso, to respond to the report of the territorial UIL to the Public Prosecutor's Office for the serious environmental risk following the abandonment of the landfill, disclosed a report from the ARPAS on the last inspection in Serra Scirieddus, that of 11 October last.

The confession

In the signed text, in fact, the landfill manager, Raffaele Garau, calmly declared: «The samplings were not carried out according to the Uni 10802/2013 standard as it was impossible to manage in consideration of the number of incoming loads. The timing required for sampling would limit the contributions to about 3-4 per day against a request of even 50 ". According to these reports, nothing more can be known about what was buried inside the landfill: they are all "non-representative" samples. Last note: the Riverso with a note states: the "landfill is not in a state of abandonment." Too bad that all workers are on layoffs and the "precise behavioral indications" have been provided "to external personnel". And finally, absolute silence on the key element: landfill insurance. A mountain of poisons with no guarantees in place. No company wanted to insure it and there is no coverage that guarantees the safety, physical closure of the landfill and monitoring for the next 30 years, as required by law. The Bulgarian insurance company, Nadejda, had declared coverage until June 2023. The Province had also believed in it.

Discontinued insurance

It is a pity that IVASS (Institute for the supervision of insurance) on 17 August 2017 announced that the Bulgarian Supervisory Authority had revoked the authorization to carry out the insurance activity towards the Insurance Company Nadejda Ad. In the Province of Southern Sardinia they continue to pretend nothing has happened, despite in a similar case, with the same Nadejda, the Environmental Authorization Section of the Puglia Region, with immediate effect, suspended the reception of waste due to lack of guarantees. But no one here cares about the future of that mountain of poisons. In Serra Scirieddus, those poisons, unknown and buried, no longer guarantee them.

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