“Crotone hosts one of the most contaminated sites in the entire country, in the “ex Pertusola” area, where enormous quantities of waste are piled up which represent a serious danger for the environment and the health of citizens of the entire urban area, as well as prevent any tourist and economic development of the territory. “Reclamation is planned, also recognized by a sentence of the Court of Milan, but for some time we have been witnessing Eni’s attempt to overturn the resolution of the Services Conference of 24 October 2019 on the methods of reclamation of the Site of National Interest “Crotone-Cassano-Cerchiara”. At that time it was decided to take the waste outside the regional territory, to avoid worsening, through the creation of new landfills, the critical environmental situation that the citizens of Crotone are experiencing. It must be clear that this decision, confirmed among other things in a second Services Conference in February 2023, where there was also a stop to the wicked idea of burying part of the waste on the industrial site itself, must be respected and we must start as soon as possible with the definitive reclamation of the area”. This is how the group leader of the 5 Star Movement in the Regional Council clarifies their position Davide Tavernise and the five-star provincial coordinator in Crotone Elisabetta Barbuto.
“Even today Eni-Rewind tries in every way to subvert that decision, unilaterally and without taking into consideration either the will of the territorial administrations or, much less, the needs of the local populations who have been living with concrete health risks for too long ”, continue the two 5-star exponents, supported by the Sentieri study, promoted by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in concert with the Ministry of Health and the Minister of the Environment, which recorded alarming health risk data for the resident population , with a sharp increase in tumors due to environmental exposures.
For Tavernise and Barbuto a firm and decisive resolution from the regional administration on the issue is important, already formalized unanimously by the Regional Council of Calabria on 19 June 2023 with a motion that commits the regional council “to coordinating all the Calabrian institutions aimed at countering even in judicial headquarters, ENI’s attempt to overturn the resolution of the Services conference”.
In order not to let the commitments made by the Regional Council fall into oblivion, and to avoid other nefarious projects, such as the opening of new landfills in the Crotone area where, if necessary, the waste from the area to be reclaimed can be transferred, the five-star group leader in the Region has forwarded a question to the President of the Regional Council, Roberto Occhiuto, to take a decisive and immutable position on the impossibility of reopening the Paur (single regional authorization provision) and of remodulating the already approved Phase 2 Reclamation Project, definitively clarifying that waste deriving from industrial activities in Crotone must be transported outside the regional territory, for example have as soon as possible a plan of interventions and a timetable of the works from the new Extraordinary Commissioner delegated to coordinate and promote the implementation of the remediation and repair of environmental damage in the Sin of Crotone-Cassano and Cerchiara and to prevent the opening of a landfill for hazardous and non-hazardous waste in the Giammiglione area, a project that would be detrimental to public health and the environmental situation of an area already largely compromised.