Waste in Messina, Germanà against the Mili plant: “Wait for the TAR and look for an alternative site”

A new waste treatment plant, to be built in Mili, in the Municipality of Messina, is causing much controversy due to its proximity to the town center and to areas where there are sports facilities and a well for drinking water distributed in the city. The citizen committee “I love my country” has undertaken numerous actions, including an administrative appeal to the Sicilian Regional Administrative Court for the annulment of the regional decree which provides for the construction of the plant. Now the case also reaches Parliament with a question to the national government by Senator Nino Germanà who is also the regional secretary of the League in Sicily. “There is a serious threat to public health in relation to the construction of this plant for the treatment of the humid fraction of waste and to support the purification cycle in the Mili area, in Messina – states Nino Germanà. The location of the plant – he continues – is in clear contrast with a regional law (LR 9 of 2010), which imposes a minimum distance of three kilometers from the perimeter of the inhabited center for waste management sites. Furthermore, the Technical Scientific Committee of the Sicilian Region has already highlighted very serious critical issues and potential interferences linked to the location of the project. And it is pending before the Regional Administrative Court of Sicily – recalls Senator Germanà – a judgment which has already led the Regional Administrative Court itself to accept an appeal pointing out that the issues raised are not manifestly unfounded. From the personal knowledge I have of the area, I cannot fail to underline – adds Nino Germanà – that close to the site on which the facility should be built there is a building used as a residential building, a covered municipal sports facility (Pala). Mili) frequented by adults and children, the “Oteri” well which supplies drinking water to the citizens and a nursing home about 750 meters away from the area where the waste treatment plant is planned”. Despite the pending administrative proceedings, the formal warnings, the critical issues raised at the CTS and the complaints presented, Invitalia Spa announced the open procedure for the assignment of the executive design and execution of the works. Furthermore, with a quick procedure, the contract was definitively awarded to the temporary grouping of companies led by the Consorzio Stabile Energos. “It must be said clearly – continues Senator Nino Germanà – that a possible acceptance of the appeal to the TAR would legitimize the successful company to take compensation actions. For these reasons, my parliamentary question to the ministers of the Environment, Health, infrastructure and transport, and of European Affairs, the South and cohesion policies, serves to understand whether the government is aware of the serious situation and the clear violations of the law and of the principles of prudence that characterize the authorization process, and has the objective of having the appropriate and necessary actions taken to promote the immediate suspension of any activity connected to the award at the start of the works, pending the resolution of the dispute pending before the TAR or in any case to identify an alternative location that allows saving the financing with the Pnrr funds and thus avoiding the waste of public resources”.