The deal is a millionaire, all played out in the silence and dim light of the great waste business. An intertwining of contracts and subcontracts for an uncontrolled mountain of sewage sludge which, in the end, willy-nilly, is all part of the very delicate food chain. From 2018 to 2020, in the fragrant island of Sardinia, the already impressive quantities declared by the exclusive Sardinian purification managers were even added to the sewage waste sent with impunity to the land of the Nuraghi from distant Puglia. Thousands of tons shamelessly dumped in some landfill ready for anything, or scattered here and there, once in the Malvasia land, sometimes buried in the fields of the fodder or olive groves of the Campidano. A discreet vortex, were it not for that nauseating stench that from time to time bursts like a slap in the open on the most untouched prosceniums of the island. Tar and the State Council, prosecutors and courts, in recent months have definitively swept that continental traffic of sewage sludge destined to "fertilize" the agricultural fields of the ancient land of Sardinia. It is illegal to introduce extraregional waste on the island, sentences have now been sanctioned without appeal. The chapter, however, is far from closed. To keep it open are the sewage residues produced by Sardinian purifiers, not a few, according to the data that the latest official report makes available from the Region.

An avalanche

In 2019, the production of sewage sludge destined for agricultural reuse amounted to 85,000 tons, which translated into dry matter became 18,572. All data that have a premise: reliability. The report of the Region does not hide it: "It must be premised that to the measurement errors possibly made by the interested parties, attributable to statistical concepts, those deriving from possible non-uniformities in the measurement methods (tons transformed into cubic meters or vice versa) must be added, in moment of the measurement (at the time of withdrawal from the plants or in the drying phase more or less advanced), in the possible conversions (measurement carried out on the sludge as it is and the dry substance obtained) ". In some cases they may be mere errors, in others, however, they become systematic and suspicious. The criminal investigations, from north to south of Italy, have revealed methods and dangers that have been lurking for some time in the management of this very delicate environmental, health and other issues. The reality that emerges every day is disturbing: there is a lack of real, constant controls and superpartes, with so many looming subterfuges. The risk is that those muds, a nauseating synthesis of the sewers of the island's municipalities, end up directly in agricultural lands. The consequences are easily imaginable. In those wastewater, to be theoretically transformed into "fertilizer", there is a concentrate of all kinds of waste. The latest criminal investigation on the subject is that of the Court of Brescia on a frightening round of sludge abruptly stopped in northern Italy. The investigating judge Elena Stefana writes in her ordinance of last July: "In the samples leaving the company and which were scattered on the land, the polluting substances (fluorides, sulphates, chlorides, nickel, copper, selenium, arsenic, hydrocarbons, zinc, phenols) were tens, if not hundreds of times higher than the legal parameters ".

Corn on the cob & conscience

In the records of that investigation, the consequences of those muds scattered in the fields are all in a wiretapping of one of the suspects: "Who knows the child who eats the cob of corn grown on the mud ...". Words that nail the conscience: what is discharged in the fields ends up, sooner or later, on everyone's plate. It is an automatic environmental-health chain, which risks erasing the healthiness of the land, altering it for the purpose of pseudo-intensive production, indelibly undermining the quality and safety of agri-food and even zootechnical products. There are laws, it is true, including the latest Genoa decree, approved after the collapse of the Morandi Bridge. Controversial and in many ways disturbing regulations, given that inside those sewage sludge it could also be legitimate to find toxic and carcinogenic substances. To this is added a disruptive question: the lack of traceability, of real and tight, and not random, controls on those sludge that end up altering the land and consequently the food chain. The business vortex is a shredder of norms and consciences. It is no coincidence that the vast majority of that sludge ends up in agricultural land. A real river in flood that flows on four or more driving wheels, arrives in the fields crossing rough and dirt roads, raises the caisson and unloads the nauseating heap, as if miraculously the ground received a propitiatory sewer windfall.

The triangle

To be more explicit: Abbanoa, which outsources the management of the purifiers in Sardinia through a mega contract, won by a Spanish multinational, pays millions and millions to guarantee the disposal of that sludge. He pays and relieves himself of any kind of burden, from civil to criminal. Contracts are a double-hammer chain for the serial discharge of responsibility. In the provisions signed between the manager (Abbanoa), contractor (Spanish company) and subcontractor (Sardinian monopolist) the key word is "indemnity", that is the contractual clause to relieve the person who gets rid of that sludge from responsibility. A hot matter, from every point of view. In the subcontracting contract for the management of the sludge produced by the Abbanoa purifiers it is written: "the subcontractor undertakes as of now to indemnify and hold harmless the contractor from any damage, expense, burden, cost, penalty and / or prejudicial consequence of any nature that could derive from any appeal or action brought in any place, including criminal, against the contractor by third parties, for any damage to the environment and / or health ". As if to say: if the Arpas, the Noe, or the Forestale arrive, don't look for us.

Indemnify

The responsibility for those sludge passes entirely to the subcontractor, the one who, based on the millionaire contract, signed on March 31, 2021, must deal with the reuse or disposal of that material, most often palatable, with the consistency of the plasticine of the past . The legislation is a black hole and the controls are a deep red. The rigor of silence applies to the Sardinian management of these materials discharged into the environmental cycle of agricultural land. The data, however, are too clear a photograph not to raise the curtain on what is happening and above all on what is not being done to control this increasingly invasive phenomenon in the Sardinian countryside. All are or declare themselves ignorant of how much sewer "fertilizer" is ending up in the luxuriant and renowned Sardinian agriculture. A silence that does not speak for the best. At stake is an unavailable asset: the quality of nature, the geological identity of the land, respect for the organoleptic specificities of Sardinian agriculture. Putting this immense patrimony at risk, with the sole aim of earning millions from the sewage sludge business, means taking a gamble that can cost Sardinia infinitely a lot, both in terms of image and in terms of health. public. Many "celebrate" the spreading of this sludge in agriculture as a shining example of a "circular economy" where waste becomes the panacea for land and agriculture. In reality, according to many studies, agricultural lands have not benefited in terms of fertility, while the level of soil pollution has increased dramatically.

The headquarters

The use of sewage sludge has quickly become a boundless business. In Sardinia, the scenario is marked by numbers that mark an ever-growing phenomenon, with an eloquent fact: it is increasingly convenient to spread the sewage sludge in agriculture, preferably a stone's throw from the monopoly plant located in Sanluri, in direct connection with the road that connects the Carlo Felice with the Medio Campidano. Therefore, the principle is hedonistic: maximum profit with minimum effort. The maximum profit is a six-figure gain, millions of euros that Abbanoa pays to the Spaniards who, in turn, turn to the Sardinian monopolist. The minimum effort is to convince the farmers opposite the Sanluri plant to "ennoble" their lands with those "precious" sewage sludge that has suddenly become "miraculous", especially for the bank accounts of those who manage this imposing mass. of wastewater transformed into gold. In 2019 the sewage sludge reused in agriculture became 74% of that produced in Sardinia. In the last year examined by the Department of the Environment, however, the sludge placed in reserve has also grown disproportionately, i.e. those with even more invasive problems, and used in agriculture only at a later time. In this case, the overall figure for the use of sludge rises to 81% of that produced. The increase in sludge spreading on agricultural land compared to 2018 is very significant: 2,230 tons more, equal to a 19.23% increase in one year. As if those produced at home were not enough, in the last twelve months surveyed, those of 2019, before the judicial blockade, the arrival on the island of 18,500 tons of sewage sludge sent from the Apulian Aqueduct continued.

The sludge grows

The map of the spreading of Sardinian sludge in the countryside sees South Sardinia in the lead, with a very significant increase in sludge scattered in those agricultural lands. In 2019 the province of Southern Sardinia was still in first place for the quantity of sludge reused in agriculture, going from 39% to 52% of the total compared to the previous year. The province of Sassari reaches 30.75%, the metropolitan area of Cagliari reuses 9.31%, the province of Oristano 7.94% and that of Nuoro just 0.10%. The data in our possession speak of 29 farms involved in the operation, eight fewer than the previous year, a sign of an evident rethinking of these practices. The municipalities affected by this agricultural-sewage spreading decreased compared to the previous year, from 19 to 17. The extension of the land that received so much sewage waste is infinite, like 2,600 football fields. Two thousand and six hundred hectares of agricultural land that have "benefited" from this nauseating "fertilizer". However, there is no public trace of the checks carried out, of the analyzes carried out by non-partisan subjects. Control is, in fact, entrusted exclusively to those who manage the sludge business alone. There are, then, the Municipalities that sometimes suffer and others react, complete with complaints. The map of the great deal of sewage sludge in Sardinia, however, is still to be written. Municipality by municipality, procurement, business and millions galore.

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