Call it the curse of the "suitable areas". It is, like a sort of state anathema that systematically strikes the Island of Sardinia. The new persecution on Sardinian soil is peddled with a frightening definition: "suitable area". Suitable for hurling the most nefarious military servitudes, those that bomb and devastate coasts and promontories, onto the earthly paradises of Capo Teulada, onto the proscenium of Capo San Lorenzo and onto the Peninsula of Capo Frasca.

Suitable for easements

Area suitable for the most arrogant financial and energy speculation in history, the one that would like to tear landscapes and agricultural lands, ridges and marine horizons to shreds, to make room for thousands of steel monsters, taller than the Eiffel Tower, and endless expanses of solar "grills" ready to devastate climate and nature. The last suitable area lands on the Isola dei Nuraghi in the days in which the Regional Council of Sardinia is preparing to "sell off" landscapes and the environment to the "quicksand" of the Draghi Decree, the one that established that there is no distinction between "suitable" and "unsuitable" areas.

Last chance

The latest gamble has a start date: November 26, 2024, start of the Strategic Environmental Assessment procedure for the sites intended to host the “Single Repository for radioactive waste”. The mastermind once again is called Pichetto Fratin, that Gilberto who for two years has occupied the position of Minister “theoretically” “of the Environment” and “practically” of the phantom “Energy Security”. It is once again him, the Piedmontese in love with wind and nuclear power, who gives the green light to the increasingly wavering procedure for identifying the “Site for the Single National Repository for radioactive waste”.

Hanging medals

A curse that has been hanging over Sardinia's head since 2001, when a powerful General, one with slouching shoulders due to the multitude of state braids and stars nailed to his chest, a certain Carlo Jean, invented, on behalf of the Government of the time, a plan to create a single repository to "house" the radioactive waste from decommissioned nuclear power plants in the wake of a popular referendum that sanctioned the end of an era that began badly and ended even worse. He was rejected and kicked out, with Sardinia digging the grave for that deleterious plan that had never explicitly mentioned the Island, but had outlined its identikit.

“Tripe for cats”

They stopped, realizing that there was no “tripe for cats”, that the project would blow up with the institutional way or with the popular uprising. The story of Carlo Jean, the General of nuclear waste, however, has taught nothing. Pichetto Fratin, at least he, has not studied it thoroughly. Since he took office in the most ambiguous of Ministries, devoted to environmental protection but bent on the devastation of landscapes and nature, he has not given himself peace. He is trying in every way.

Minister in a wavering mood

Just look at the legislative and administrative excursus of this last year. On February 2nd of this year, the Parliament, on the proposal of the Minister, had converted a Decree of the Meloni Government that explicitly planned the “humpback coup” in two moves: volunteer Municipalities are sought and the Ministry of Defense is “invited” to self-nominate military bases, perhaps those in Sardinia, to host the “Deposit” for radioactive waste. The premise was written down in black and white: “ in order to reach a shared solution and facilitate the process of locating the National Deposit ” it is foreseen “ the possibility for all territorial entities, as well as for the Ministry of Defense with regard to the military structures involved, to present their own self-nomination to host the Deposit ”.

Door in the face

They laughed in his face, all, or almost all, of the 8,000 bell towers of Italy. “Almost”, because in reality a Mayor, that of Trino Vercellese, an area already burdened by a decommissioned nuclear power plant, had ventured the candidacy of his Municipality as a volunteer. He could not withstand the force of shock of his community: the uprising was immediate. He did not end up like the “poor” General Jean, but he was very close: resolution withdrawn, no voluntary candidacy. The Ministry of Defense, usually always attracted by the donation of copious public money, did not have the courage to dare. The “radioactive” history of Generals and ministers of the moment was already deeply marked by depleted uranium and thorium to also venture the storage of radioactive waste inside the polygons.

No to nuclear volunteering

Thus Pichetto Fratin, forced by the failure of the move on “nuclear volunteering”, had to go back 14 years, to the Legislative Decree of 2010, number 31, which had established the methods for authorizing and building the bunker-station where radioactive waste would be segregated. He will say, as he said, that he was obliged by the regulations of the time to start the Strategic Environmental Assessment procedure, always codified as “Vas”. In fact, the regulations provided that, after the “volunteering” failed, the Minister would have to initiate the strategic assessment on the National Map of Suitable Areas.

Sogin's forgetful people

It is a pity, however, that the “nuclear” arm of the State, Sogin, charged with “dismantling” the radioactive power plants and building the nuclear “mausoleum”, has declared that it has “drawn up” that map “on the basis of the results of the public consultation and the national seminar conducted after the publication of the National Map of Potentially Suitable Areas”. There are two things, either Sogin is declaring something false, or it has literally and deliberately ignored what Sardinia has been loudly shouting at it for 23 years, with laws, popular referendums, resolutions of hundreds of municipalities, technical and legal reports: the Island is not suitable.

Sardinia trampled

Sogin ignored it, but it could not continue to ignore the Minister. And, instead, it did: explicitly and arrogantly, trampling and failing to comply with the same constitutional dictate that should have imposed greater respect for a Special Region in all respects, starting from that invoked art. 3 of the Autonomous Statute which in letter «f» assigns to Sardinia the “sacrosanct” competence of the Government of the Territory. This is how on November 26th the Mayors of 14 municipalities of the Island received the bitter notification: « start of the procedure for submitting the national map of areas suitable for the strategic environmental assessment procedure ».

Waste paper

The latest resolutions of the Region and the Municipalities, which three years ago declared their opposition to that nefarious “radioactive” strategy, have been transformed into waste paper, thrown away on the altar of the nuclear lobbies that loom over the mega deal. The Minister and Sogin should have, without wasting time, removed Sardinia's position, not only for the technical arguments set out by the Region in a 139-page report, but above all for the legal ones that assign Sardinia primary competence in the Government of the Territory, at least until the next attempted coup by the State against Sardinian Autonomy.

Fourteen municipalities

At stake, once again, is the heart of the Island, from Marmilla to Trexenta, up to Oristano. Fourteen municipalities under fire: Albagiara, Assolo, Usellus, Mandas, Siurgus Donigala, Segariu, Villamar, Setzu, Tuili, Turri, Ussaramanna, Nurri, Ortacesus and Guasila. These are the areas that Sogin considers suitable to host the single national repository. There is a deadline to oppose, that of Christmas.

Saint Stephen

Before Boxing Day, the Municipalities will have to send yet another opposition to a wavering State, perpetually incapable of respecting the will of the people. A “parastatal” system stubborn in pursuing the interests of lobbies and business, all to be consumed on the now “decrepit” altar of the environment. To be sacrificed, according to the Palaces of Rome, there is once again Sardinia: first with the “suitable areas” for military easements, then those “suitable” for speculators of wind and sun, now those destined for nuclear waste. All this in the only land that is truly “unsuitable”.

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