THESE GREEN HILLS BETWEEN MUGGIA AND DOLINA (originally published in 2011).
This text is translated from the 2016 revised edition of book “Tracks of Legality” by Roberto Giurastante
The green Montedoro hills separate the Municipalities of Muggia and of Dolina. It is green, delightful hills, descending from the border with Slovenia to the sea. But they do also separate two of Trieste’s the most polluted areas.
At the south, at the base of the hills, there is the Noghere valley, Trieste’s biggest landfill. It consists of more than 15 millions cubic meters of waste, dumped in what used to be one of the most important, humid oasis of the High Adriatic zone, at the mouth of the Rio Ospo.
North to the hills there is the Zaule valley, another landfill/embankment run by the corrupt system that rules Trieste and its territory since 60 years.
Landfills of State later turned into an industrial zone, allowing hundreds of companies to settle there. Including the strategic and hazardous transalpine pipeline which, with its huge depots, lies at the base of the northern side of the hills of Montedoro.
A narrow, green line breaks the continuity of an environmental disaster. The green hills between Muggia and Dolina.
Or so it seems. Because in Montedoro’s bowels hides another uncomfortable truth, another deep wound inflicted to this land. It is an underground net of military fuel depots, which extends for kilometers.
About 20 cisterns, armored galleries, inner or external, disguised pipelines. At least 30 millions of liters of fuel. This is the capacity of the tanks. A depot which, as for now, is strategic only when it comes to the pollution it causes to the territory.
Because the whole complex looks abandoned, but nobody ever cared to restore the damages inflicted to both the environment and the people who live in this border area, forced into military servitude and in a den for waste, turned into a dumping ground for the “dirty work” of a Nation that never wanted to deal with history.
Currently, this area is classified as “agricultural”, and it does even host the municipal aqueduct of Muggia, and its pipes do “courageously” go deep into the hill of fear. Is it possible that nobody has ever thought that these lands, apparently so peaceful, might be dripped with hydrocarbons?
It would be enough crossing this edge of land to smell the exhalations of hydrocarbon… the gas that keeps leaking from the air cleaners and from the numerous, small wells that pop out of the dense vegetation… but also from the soil itself which, by now, seems to have become one with the “monster” hidden in it.
And this is how in the green, delightful hills of this “far” Northeast, abandoned to its destiny of human and environmental degradation, everything remains unchanged. By force (of the rulers) and due to the resignation (of the oppressed people).
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This video shows the Montedoro hills.
Download the English subtitles HERE.