Free Trieste

THE MYSTERY OF THE VANISHED DRUMS

CHEMICAL WEAPONS ANS POLLUTION OF STATE IN THE KARST OF TRIESTE
Originally published in 2013
2013_04_25

Trieste, April 25th, 2013 – Nine months ago, Greenaction first denounced to public opinion and launched an allarm about Trieste hosting the Italian Army’s former chemical weapons depots. Including a WWII-era underground, armored network in the bowels of the hills near the border with Slovenia.

The most critical areas, those may hide the remnants of Italian chemical and biological weapons, have been contaminated with the biggest landfills. Landfills approved and run by the administering Italian authorities, ever since 1954.

Among the most contaminated areas, there is the Noghere Valley – between the Municipalities of Trieste and Muggia. It is the biggest coastal landfill: it extends from Trieste to the border with Slovenia. There are also maritime landfills (underwater), many caves of the Karst plateau are contaminated, and near the town of Trebiciano – Trebče there used to be a massive dumping ground.

And it is exactly here, near Trebiciano – Trebče, that Greenaction’s activists discovered the big, concrete drums. They were likely used to stock toxic waste from the Italian Army’s arsenal. The drums were partially buried in one of the former dumping ground’s doline. They were empty, but it looked like they had been abandoned there after their content had been dumped in the environment.

The drums had been there for decades, the only visible sign of environmental contamination. Indeed, until the mid 1970s, this was the Italian establishments’s main landfill on the Karst plateau, and dumping ground of choice to dispose hazardous waste. Both Italian secret services and the Gladio 2 network carefully supervised the area.

But now the drums have mysteriously disappeared.

They were taken away after Greenaction wrote about them and published one photo. The article explained also their probable use. Is it possible that after the new became public, such an “incriminating” evidence had to vanish? Indeed, the drums tell a long hidden history.

It is very likely that this is how the drums disappeared. But this does also mean that whoever did it was able to locate them, to find them easily despite the many other doline and the vegetation. All to get back some thorny (and bulky) remains of a secret war that, apparently, must remain hidden.

Yet, not all evidences can disappear: those on the surface are only part of the story. Because whoever has dumped hazardous waste and has hidden chemical and bacteriological weapons in this area must be well aware that recovering the drums is not enough.

On the Kars plateau, in the depth of mysterious doline/former dumping grounds, there is a hidden monster, which is slowly devouring the environment and killing harmless victims.

Recently, wild boars are dying on the Karst plateau. Mysteriosly, yet someone mentions unusual levels of radioactivity in the carcasses. This can depend on the pollution that affects the area, because of the waste buried in there: the Karst is polluted by the Italian State’s poisons.

Source: dossier “IL MISTERO DEI FUSTI SCOMPARSI” by environmentalist organization Greenaction Transnational