The story is a blow to coherence: a mid-August decree of the Sardinian Region which expropriates the agricultural lands of Villacidro to allow a very private Piedmontese company to drive new shovels into the raped proscenium of Medio Campidano. The motivation for the theft, legally an expropriation, is a boulder to common sense: public utility, when, however, the new private affair is a knife stuck in the heart of the history of the land of shadows .
Monte Linas fenced off
The unmistakable skyline of Monte Linas, between Villacidro and Guspini, is fenced off, as if even barbed wire had been imposed. The steel and fiberglass quills that stand out against the sky rotate to the rhythm of the wind that sweeps the slopes of Medio Campidano. The twilight of the night on that promontory has already been interrupted for some time by a curtain of intermittent red lights, as if to mark the active garrison of the old and new invaders. Wherever you turn, in this land of abandoned chimneys, you end up bumping into those rotating iron towers that the laws of speculation and bad politics have imposed on a territory violated by negligence and connivance. The new frontier, the most unscrupulous one, stands out over Villacidro like a caterpillar that devastates, without obstacles, the last resistance to the wind invasion in Sardinian land.
Public-private expulsion
Manu militari , either you move or we move you. All with decrees and usurpation of agricultural land in the name and on behalf of very private businesses on the heads of farmers and territory. Constitutional values such as landscape and environment, recently strengthened in the absolute and pre-eminent protection, trampled on the altar of interests that have nothing of the public, let alone of public utility. What prevails over everything is private interest, the unpunished one, authorized to devastate more and more an area loaded with exclusive and only theoretically protected naturalistic relevance, as if the lords of the wind had found accomplices to lay down the law even in the country of 'shadows .
Revolt & submission
Perhaps it will be a coincidence, but the expropriation of those lands takes place precisely in one of the Sardinian towns that more than others, in the past, had opposed the profiteers of public lands, those who wanted to transform civic forests, those of all, into very private businesses , for very few. Today as yesterday, therefore, with a difference, however, not insignificant. During the years of Savoyard domination it was the Piedmontese proconsuls who snatched those lands, this time the usurpation was penned by none other than the Sardinian Region itself. Yes, precisely the one that the Constitution identifies as autonomous and special, invested by the founding fathers with the burden and power to govern the territory, with relevant duties and powers for the protection of the environment and the landscape. As if nothing had happened, the guardian of the island, on the other hand, unexpectedly opened the doors to "foreign" companies, in this case, by irony of bad luck, to the new Piedmontese, protagonists of the new invasion on the slopes of Monte Linas. The story is controversial, dark and even diabolical. In the regional offices the order is peremptory: you must answer that it is a duty. And moreover, in the provision adopted first by the Department of Industry and then by that of Local Authorities and Town Planning, there are punctual references to the rules which attribute to the Region the power to issue «provisions of emergency occupation, preordained to enslavement, expropriation and temporary occupation".
Villacidro case
The Villacidro case, however, is emblematic, both in substance and in the procedure adopted. A precedent that risks turning into a veritable avalanche of expropriations for the entire Sardinian territory. Expropriate agricultural land and not only with the justification of an alleged and vaunted "public utility", we don't know for whom, to place wind turbines everywhere, is much more than a Trojan horse placed in the heart of the landscape and the environment of the Island. The first element that brings out very heavy contradictions is precisely the deed of the Department of Industry which cloaks in "public utility" what is in reality a very private affair, that of the company "Das Villacidro srl", a company from Cuneo which has landed who knows as in the "Land of Shadows" . The contradiction is evident: on the one hand, the Region is challenging the government's provisions, starting with that of the Draghi government, which impose the wind invasion of the island, and on the other, however, expropriates the farmers' land with its own provisions for allow devastating wind speculation in Sardinia.
The about-face
In the appeals of the Region, both in the Tar and in the Council of State, the reasons for preventing this barbaric horde in any way are argued in a timely manner. They wrote it in the appeals against government decrees and state-approved wind projects in Sardinia: this invasion of wind turbines is not useful for Sardinia because the island has already reached its renewable production standards. The Region's lawyers have even argued, with knowledge of the facts and meaningful technical assessments, that the impact of these steel skyscrapers irreversibly disfigures the "Landscape", even creating significant problems for environmental protection, see the impossibility of safe use of helicopters in firefighting campaign.
Invasion without rules
There's more: one of the most contested issues in the Region's appeals is the quantification of this wind invasion, which appears in stark contrast with the community principle of "energy proximity", i.e. the clear and clear indication that the he wind or solar energy must be consumed where it is produced. In reality, everyone knows that the wind farms planned in Sardinia are nothing more than a mega speculation destined only to collect a mountain of public incentives, leaving expensive energy and unprecedented landscape devastation on the island. To the substantial contradiction that emerges from the acts of the Region, there is an even more insidious one which concerns a procedure dotted with black holes and evident shadows.
The shadow of the times
First of all, the timing of this "regional decree" of expropriation for public utility. The "Das Villacidro" sent it with a green envelope and yellow registered letter to the farmers of Villacidro and Serramanna right around August 15th, as if it wanted to make it even more difficult to oppose this umpteenth scar inflicted on the slopes of Monte Linas. A provision for an "emergency occupation", as if at stake there was a hydrogeological work essential to save human lives, in short, a matter of life and death.
Urgency of 12 years
In reality, the timing passed off as "urgent", in accordance with state orders, does not reconcile with the history of this project. The first design draft of these ten additional wind turbines in the proscenium of Villacidro dates back to 12 years ago, exactly in February 2011. What could have been "urgent" for such an outdated project is an absolute mystery, as it appears truly surprising what emerges with documents in hand in the deeds filed in the Region, or the attempt to deny any "transparency" on the project. Two elements are enough to understand the "silence" imposed on the project, almost as if no one should know what was being planned in the presence of the Land of Shadows . The first "shadow" concerns the fundamental provisions to make the expropriation procedure valid: first of all the legal and punctual communication of all the steps relating to the project to be transmitted from the first step to each individual recipient of the "theft" of their own land.
Hidden ads
The only act of "advertising" present in the file of "Das Villacidro" is an announcement published on the page of a newspaper in northern Sardinia. Date of communication that of March 3, 2014, nine years ago. Among the microscopic characters of the announcement, there is no indication of the subjects affected by the procedure, much less cadastral indications useful for identifying any recipients of the future procedure. As if to inform the citizens of Milan of an expropriation in the land of Padania they had published the announcement in the pages of a Sicilian newspaper.
The Samassi summit
But there's more: in the procedure of this project even a public assembly is called, held on May 5, 2015, in Samassi, none other than. The task of the meeting should have been to satisfy the obligation to fulfill the public phase of the investigation. Also in this case, the geographical originality of the procedure is exemplary: they have to expropriate agricultural land in Villacidro and organize the institutional confrontation in a municipality that has nothing to do with it. All elements that contribute to cast a considerable shadow on this silent, creeping, obscured "expropriation". A vulnus not only technical-legal, but also political, straddling at least three legislatures.
Outlawed procedures
The administrative courts called to examine similar cases were exhaustive: "the entire expropriation procedure is illegitimate, since the obligation to communicate the start of the authorization procedure for the plant was violated and, consequently, it was not granted to the owners the possibility of speaking with the Administration proceeding with respect to the affixing of the restriction, before the declaration of public utility of the land and the approval of the definitive project for the construction of the plant». The substance is clear-cut: the public administration directly issued a deed of expropriation without allowing the addressees of the measure to be able to participate in the proceeding, preliminary to the declaration of public utility of the land subject to expropriation. The judgment of the Courts on similar cases is tranchant: it is noted that "for the construction of a wind farm, the action of the public administration was negligent and illegal as well as grossly negligent since the Region proceeded with the arbitrary occupation and expropriation of the land of private citizens without granting the right to participate in the proceedings and forcing them to bear even the weight of undertaking a judgment in order to defend their right to property".
Judgments with damage
The condemnation repeated by the Tar on similar cases was without appeal: restitution of the fund to the owners of the land and compensation for the damage for the abuse suffered. If the farmers of Villacidro have the strength to react in the Court, but the Municipality can do it too since it is directly involved, the administrative judges will decide the fate of that affront to the country of shadows, blocking a precedent that risks to devastate the whole island.
Complicit silence
On the other hand, the political case remains without reactions. The embarrassed silence of the majority and the opposition on this emblematic story is much more eloquent than any response whatsoever. In other times, expropriations for public utility for the benefit of very private businesses would have provoked resounding expulsions and irrevocable resignations. Now, from the Country of Shadows to the "Region of Silence", the step is short.
