Trebiciano – Trebče: A black, oily lake on the bottom of a cave.
Noon, 12:00. Tank trucks leave the town behind, following a dirt road. The Italian financial police – Guardia di Finanza escorts them.
They carry a deadly load, and nobody must get near it. The trucks transport “sludge”. It is industrial lime contaminated with hydrocarbons. Indeed a deadly mix of industrial waste, so it must disappear.
The townsfolk is no longer surprised by such odd, unwanted convoys: they come and go at any time, day and night. It is the “special loads”. The “usual” ones, those of the Municipality, transport “bio waste” and the incineration plant’s ashes. And, unlike the special ones, they don’t require being escorted by the Police, the Carabinieri, or the Guardia di Finanza.
The tank trucks keep going for 2 more km, then, following their escort, the trucks turn right. After a few more hundred meters, they reach a vertical cave. The ponor, a hole with about 1 meter diameter, is almost hidden by the vegetation.
The trucks place pipes near the ponor, and the sludge flows in the underground. Thousands of liters of poison flow down the hole, dirtying the cave’s walls.
A black, dark cascade flows down, down, to the cave’s bottom. Here it reaches the cave’s bottom, where there is an unnatural, oily, black lake.
One hour later, the operation is over. The trucks and their escort turn back, on the way to the town.
It’s 8 PM. The sun is going down, yet more trucks are on the way, and more waste is coming. Indeed, as the night falls, the dumping ground becomes busier and busier. Now there are the Army’s armored vehicles, and well-sealed trucks. All of them cross the Karst plateau to discharge their inconvenient loads in the deepest doline (natural valleys).
The convoy comes from a military storehouse hidden in Trieste’s port. Here, the trucks collect dozens of iron drums and armored concrete. The trucks light the ruined street. One more turn, on the left. A clearing appears. Artificial light are on.
In the midst of the clearing, the ground forms a natural valley. The dolina’s diameter is 200 meters, maybe more. The valley is regularly used as a dumping ground. It is already half full of waste. The trucks divide, reaching two different sectors of the dolina-landfill.
Trucks with hydraulic buckets, transporting iron drums, reach the northern side of the valley. Here, using an artificial ramp, they dump all the iron drums. They fall into a hole dug for the purpose, and soon a pale machine covers them all with dirt and other waste. In the meantime, the trucks transporting big armored drums are on the dolina’s opposite slope.
They reach the dolina’s edge, where a mobile crane awaits. The crane picks up the harnessed drums and drops them into the hole, one after another.
In the morning, it is all covered with dirt and waste. One layer of pollution after another. The dumping ground is becoming bigger and bigger.
***
It’s been forty years. Today, Trebiciano-Trebče is gloomy and abandoned. Sadness is tangible in decaying houses. And on the peoples’ faces. It is as if time had stopped.
This is the town that was the the most severe environmental disaster raging the Karst plateau.
Trebiciano has an unfortunate fate: being a crossroad for special waste disposal operations. Operations led by confidential sectors of the Italian State, in the midst of the Cold War. Almost a wasteland, in a territory regarded as Italy’s colony.
Trebiciano must live with the monster. The dumping ground, the huge dumping ground made of valley full of waste. It is always there. And it is a man-made monster, which continues poisoning the environment, and living beings. This monster breaths poisonous gas, it leaks toxins in the Karst’s aquifers every day, poisoning also the Timavo – Timav, the underground river of legends, because it flows 300 meters under the town.
Digging in the former Trebiciano landfill one can find many surprises. On each level, the dirt has a different color. It ranges from grey to rotten green, blue, even black. It is the colors of the poison that contaminates that very soul.
Sludge, hydrocarbons, heavy metals. Mixed with very hazardous, special war remnants: it is the interiors of the mysterious drums buried four decades ago in the Karst’s bowels. It is a deadly, high-tech death cocktails. Mixed by criminal minds, for mere reasons of ruthless nationalism.
Here, even dumping grounds have a racist side to them. Indeed, the majority of the Karst’s people are of Slovene ethnicity, and Italian nationalists regard “non Italians” in the most derogatory way.
For instance, the “non Italians” are also those who, in 1954, as the Italian Government began its current special trusteeship mandate over Trieste, didn’t let the propagandas about the alleged “return of Trieste to Italy” fool them.
To those people, the Italian administration brings back bitter memories about the merciless Fascist regime and its cruel oppressions from 1918 to 1945.
This is their punishment: the defeated people, regarded as “inferior” suffer poisoning and the destruction of their environment. A successful operation indeed, just take a look at the “doomed” Trebiciano – Trebče: cancer-like illnesses are very common here. It is all collateral damages of a never ending war: Trebiciano’s people are victims deprived of any right.
In 2000, the Italian Parliament’s investigative committee dealing with ecomafias started investigating the Karst’s pollution. However, it was soon stopped.
The Prefetto and the Questore of Trieste, the commanders of both Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza all issued rather telling reviews. According to them, there is no pollution on the Karst. Its morphology, they say, is unsuitable for dumping grounds…
No one should (and shall) ever investigate the Karst’s fate. Thorny truths hide there. False information, cover-ups: nobody must know about the doing of the State’s own, confidential bodies.
However, it would be unfair blaming it all on Italy alone. This happened because of the local authorities’ complicity and willingness, including the judiciary’s. This is one more crime of the local nationalistic camorra. One that would do anything to show its loyalty to Italy. Even destroy its own land.
A pact of silence among public authorities to cover up the State’s crimes.
Translated from blog “Environment and Legality” by Roberto Giurastante