Free Trieste

Poisoned doline: sludges disposed in the Karst of Trieste

When talking about pollution in the Free Territory of Trieste, one of the most clear aspects of it is the widespread ignorance about it. In facts, more than “pollution” this is an outright environmental disaster. And about 15 years ago it was a “hot topic” because that is then started the first serious investigations about the dumping grounds in the little Free State of Trieste.

It was not “institutional” investigations, because the question of pollution in Trieste was carefully hidden to the population. The investigations were started by a group of environmentalists to which I belonged, and their result was to reveal a truth that official sources had always denied. We are talking about an extended environmental disaster in comparison to the limited surface of the territory of  Trieste.

Dumping grounds would be found everywhere, revealing an unbelievable connection in which public authorities were colluded with networks of organized criminality supported on various levels by the State, by Italy, which considered the area of Trieste a convenient trash bin to dispose and traffic waste, including military waste.

I did also write a book about this environmental disaster, “Tracce di legalità” – “Tracks of Legality”, which tells about this “quest for dumping grounds” that involves a group of environmentalists who were then silenced since they disturbed the system of power that Rome protects in Trieste.

And it is exactly thanks on silence, to the denial of what has happened, that the system of power responsible for this environmental disaster at the expenses of the Free Territory of Trieste and of its citizens prospered.

Through the years, I did often talk about pollution in Trieste, also to Italian parliamentarians who belong to the Commission of inquiry about eco-mafias and they would always confirm to me that nobody was informed of this environmental emergency.

The Commission on eco-mafias always comes up against a brick wall when it attempts to get informations about pollution in Trieste, because it receives only positive reports. Nothing serious, everything is under control, this is what those in seek of the truth would hear.

Even the inclusion in Trieste in the Nazional Polluted Sites (which do include some of the most polluted areas of Italy as well) did not solve the problem. So all dumping grounds remained there, even if the very State of Italy, which should remediate them, recognizes that they are extremely dangerous.

But noting happens, it is all the same, under a rigorous silence-reserve of the institutions. So people keep bathing near huge dumping ground of hazardous waste that were built in the middle of seaside resorts, while on other dumping grounds are built houses, parks, gardens, factories. So, day by day, people are poisoned, with no possibility of defense. And they are killed by pollution.

And nobody can talk about it, otherwise there are reports against them: because here it does also happen to be committed for trial due to the report of the polluters. And it is right this deafening silence that helped the authors of such crimes to commit this environmental disaster.

We face a situation close to the collapse of democratic society, and the responsibility of the media is extremely serious. The truth has been hidden for decades to protect those in the government. And those in the government were destroying the environment and poisoning the citizens: all thanks to the interested silence of the “fourth power”.

Originally published on the website of Greenaction Transnational: D for dumping grounds.

Translated fomr blog “Ambiente e Legalità” – “Environment and Legality” Roberto Giurastante