There is a hidden war against the present-day Free Territory of Trieste, and it claims new victims every day.
It is a war against the environment: for decades, Trieste was an outright dumping ground.
Nobody talks about it: it is a very thorny legacy. It is a crime against nature, raped for State reasons. It is a crime against harmless people, contaminated every day because of State authorities themselves.
Digging in the landfills disseminated in this small strip of Northern Adriatic land, buried under loads of waste abandoned by criminal cartels, there are many evidences of this war. The Free Territory of Trieste is sub-entrusted to the Italian Government, after all. It is a foreign land. There is no reason to care about it, or its people, for the matter.
Currently, environmental pollution is seriously hampering the open game for the restoration of the legal status of the present-day FTT. Because it is here, in this place administered by Italy that are concentrated the majority of the landfills that collect toxic and hazardous waste, the product of international trafficking. Dumping grounds running from the Plateau of the Kras to the sea, with the direct involvement of the Free Port of Trieste. This is now a serious, international problem.
Indeed, Free Territory’s shore includes many marine and submarine dumping grounds running from the Northern Free Port to the border with Slovenia.
This means about 30 Kilometers of high-rate pollution. And it is almost unknown pollution.
To clarify: about any kind of waste ended up here. Be it sludges, bottom and fly ashes, asbestos, radioactive waste, to explosive remnants of war (from bombs to chemical weapons).
Indeed, those dumping grounds, just like the port’s free zones, were also convenient storages for the weapons Italian services (…or others) used in their own special Cold War era operations. Only, in Trieste the Cold War is still very much real.
Again, that port is a State Corporation of the Free Territory of Trieste. So rule UNSC Resolution S/RES/1947 and the 1947 Treaty of Peace with Italy.
This means also that as easy as it is attributing the Italian Government’s local representatives, because they should have exercised their mandate correctly preventing this disaster, finding a solution is much harder.
Evidence of local administrations discussing the creation of new marine dumping grounds
Should the Italian Government sue its local administering officers? How so, considering that they are paradoxically violating Italian law claiming to do so in the Italian State’s interest? Indeed a complex conflict of interest.
The only way out is that the UN and the Peace Treaty’s Signatories order the remediation of Trieste’s environment. But to do so, first, the Free Territory’s legal order must be restored.
Exploring the “system” of the Free Territory’s dumping grounds means entering this land’s story. And it is a story made of pain, of rights denied, including the very right to exist, and of the post-WWII treaties. But is is a useful story, because it reveals the solution to an old, and also new international conflict. It is a solution that requires compliance with the rule-based international order.
As for marine dumping grounds, in Barcola there are two interesting ones. The embankment is one of the most interesting. It is on the Free Port’s northern edge (at the Faro della Vittoria‘s feet). On the other side sits the second, huge embankment: popular seaside resort Pineta di Barcola.
This is “system Trieste” at its finest: this tourist resorts on top of poisons. Trieste is about the same as Campania and Somalia: under the thumb of mafia-like criminal cartels.
Not to mention, Trieste tops ranks when it comes to the percentage of people affected by oncological illnesses.
A model of the Barcola Embankment. Black: ashes. Dark gray: excavated material. Light gray: demolition waste.
The Barcola embankment is in the Northern Free Port, often dismissed as the “old port” by local politicians (to them old = useless), right next to the bathing area.
From 1966 to 1989, the Municipality of Trieste used this area as an uncontrolled dumping ground. The embankment has an area of 70,000 m² and contains more than 550.000 m3. During this time, the waste was dumped directly in the sea, with no safely seals. This means the waste leaked well far from the Gulf of Trieste. Not that things were any different in Trieste’s other marine dumping grounds.
So far, the identified waste is: bottom and fly ashes containing hazardous materials, sludges made of coal-tar, more sludges on the bottom of their tanks. And then asbestos, plastics, iron and axel, concrete, absorptive agents, filer materials, cloths and protective clothing contaminated with hazardous materials, weary, wood, particleboard other boards containing hazardous materials, urban, mixed municipal waste, mixed waste coming from construction or demolition sites, scraps of concerete, bricks and ceramics.
In the contaminated area there are very high levels of polychlorobiphenyl (PCB).
1978 – 1980: draft project for the Barcola embankment, commissioned by the Municipality of Trieste.
During its long life, Barcola’s dumping ground was very useful to dispose of “official” waste. The local authorities used also the Karst plateau, filling with waste hundreds of doline, pits, and caves, and then they turned to filling with waste the valley of streams Rosandra and Ospo.
Chances are, expansion by the sea was the final step in the territory’s plundering. Barcola was the relief valve of uncontrolled waste: no matter where it was from, it all ended up in the present-day Free Territory of Trieste.
Because of its strategic position, the Barcola embankment/dumping ground was under the control of the Comando Militare Italiano del Nord Est as well as a military airbase. Military aviation had a permanent station over there.
Thing changed in the early 1990s: it was time to abandon all plans to increase the embankment’s size (envisioning it to be thrice as big!). Why so?
Because, after 30 years, keeping Trieste’s environmental disaster hidden became impossible. As the EU adopted environmental legislation, and the criminal actions of the past ended abruptly.
“Despite our verbal warnings, the dumping of ashes from the incineration plant continues…”
There are many public companies involved in this epoch-marching environmental disaster: IRI, Italsider, Italposte, and more. But the one to give orders is always the same: the local nationalistic “camorra”.
And when public authorities couldn’t act directly, they would simply address organized criminality. Before the Terra dei fuochi there was Trieste, where the Italian mafias practiced a lot.
Translated from blog “Environment and Legality” by Roberto Giurastante
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OTHER POSTS IN THE “BEHIND THE LANDFILLS” SERIES:
1: INTRODUCTION – here.
2: STEELWORKS AND SURROUNDINGS – LINK
3: OF MEDIA AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTERS – LINK
4: THE AUTHORITIES’ LIABILITIES – LINK
5: RIO OSPO AND SURROUNDINGS – LINK
@RobertoGiurasta in English, hopefully, the International Community won’t ignore the tragedy of Trieste: http://t.co/HWTaBQE91s