Ilva Steelworks (again)

Italy doesn't need another long-running saga of corruption.  And my reporting on one doesn't say much of anything new.  But I came in early on this one.  And I've had a kind of morbid fascination to follow the story as it develops.  (See four earlier posts.)

This has to do with the Ilva steelworks, the largest steel producer in Europe.  The facility is located right next to the southern Italian city of Taranto in Puglia.  Last year, faced with hard-to-deny evidence that the facility was poisoning the air and the residents of Taranto, and that governmental authorities were unable or unwilling to stop it, judicial authorities stepped in.  They seized the entire facility and removed Emilio Riva and his two sons Nicola and Fabio.  The sons are under house arrest and the father has decided to live in England for a while.  

Taranto with the Ilva works in the background.

The authorities also began several criminal investigations.  The most interesting character to emerge so far appears to be a Girolamo Archinà, Ilva's director of "institutional relations."  In this position he developed and maintained relationships with individuals in all levels of government, the press, and the church.  He aim was always to allow the company to keep making steel and to avoid any constraining environmental or health rules.  As he would make his case, it must certainly have made a difference that Ilva is the region's largest employer with about 5,000 employees.  Even so, it appears Archinà may have been ready to use other means of persuasion.  He is suspected of paying 10,000 euros to a consultant to the prosecutor's office to have him tone down findings in a study of the sources of pollution in Taranto.

Ilva and Taranto are back in the news because new information from one of the investigations involves several political figures, the best-known of whom is Nichi Vendola, the governor of Puglia, an on-again, off-again national political figure, and subject of a mostly-complimentary Washington Post profile a couple of years ago.

Nichi Vendola, President of Puglia.

Apparently, telephone recordings indicate that Vendola tried to persuade the regional environmental protection agency (Agenzia regionale per la protezione ambientale) to go easy on Ilva so that it could stay open.  Vendola has denied any wrong-doing and says he hopes to meet with investigators as soon as possible.  

Meanwhile, thanks to two governmental decrees, the plant is still open, operating under a receiver.  But there are no signs the air in Taranto is any cleaner.

Dredging off the Brittany coast

Brittany and its coastal areas are among the most popular tourist destinations in France.  Besides the history and charming small towns, people are drawn to the coasts to see all manner of sea birds and marine life.  Tour companies organize multi-day explorations along coastal areas like the Rose Granite Coast in the Côtes d'Armor department.  In fact, we're planning on hiking in that area later this year with friends.

At the moment, people living around the Lannion Bay feel all of this is under threat.  The Bay, as the map shows, is just off the coast of Côtes d'Armor and neighboring Finistère.  Le Monde reports that a company based in nearby St. Malo wants to begin dredging shell sand out of the bay.

© Le Monde

The Companie Armoricaine de Navigation (CAN), a subsidiary of the Group Roullier, has a request pending to extract 8 million cubic meters (282.4 million cubic feet) of sand from an underwater dune.  If granted, the concession would extend for 20 years.  CAN's request has been filed at the Ministry of Industrial Renewal, headed by Arnaud Montebourg.

So far, it's not clear when and how Montebourg will decide.  But he will need to take into account that all 13 local councils in communities around the Bay have voted against the project.  Also, 31 associations, under the banner "People of the Dunes," have united to press their opposition.

They point out that the proposed dredging area is right between two marine zones protected under the Natura 2000 program.  This is an E.U. program meant to preserve biodiversity in critical areas.  Opponents fear that the dredging will kick up fine particulate matter that will drift into the protected areas, covering the bottom of the bay and threatening various forms of sea life.  They also point out that the dune that would be subject to the dredging is a breeding ground for sand eels, an important link in the local food chain.

© Valéry Joncheray Photographie

The company responds that alternatives to obtaining the sand from the dune would still have environmental impacts.  Getting the sand from places on land, they say, would mean putting large numbers of trucks on the roads to its plants in Brittany.  A spokesman said CAN was prepared to do more studies of environmental impact on the dune if requested by departmental authorities.

Whatever the status of the issue when we're there in August -- still pending or decided -- it'll certainly add interest to the visit.

Rouen and Taranto

Is Rouen the "French Taranto?"  The reference is to the town in Southern Italy where pollution from the Ilva steelworks has been damaging local residents' health for years while public officials seem incapable of doing anything.

Rouen, known for the cathedral that Monet painted over and over, is in fact a heavily industrialized city with a considerable petrochemical industry.  In 2001, when a chemical plant exploded in Toulouse, the shock waves, figuratively, carried all the way to this city on the Seine.  A larger version of the same plant operates in Rouen and residents must have thought that the 31 deaths and 2,500 injured could as easily have happened there.
 
Le Monde reports that twelve of the city's petrochemical facilities are classified as "upper tier" under the E.U. Seveso Directive, a directive adopted after the tragic chemical company accident in Seveso, Italy, in 1976.  Upper tier sites are subject to stringent safety and public reporting requirements.

In the middle of January a Rouen plant started leaking methanethiol.  It's said to be harmless, but it really stinks, something like rotting cabbage or smelly socks, people say.  On January 21, many people in Rouen were overwhelmed by the stench and started getting nauseous.  And because of the wind direction, so did people across western France and as far away as southeastern England.  Yet no alarm went off and no statements came from the company involved.  Company officials only started providing information after being beseiged with demands to know what was happening.

© Charly Triballeau/AFP

A ten-year-old French law requires high-tier Seveso sites to have in place a "plan for prevention of technological risks," or PPRT (plan de prévention des risques technologiques).  Companies are required to adopt safety measures at the facility itself and protect nearby neighborhoods, if necessary, by buying up homes and businesses and clearing land.  So far none of the twelve sites has an approved plan.  Critics suggest that public officials want to avoid any action threatening the financial health of the industry that locally employes 30,000 people.

In the meantime Rouen remains a city with some of the worst air in France and with the potential for a deadly serious industrial accident.  The comparison with Taranto seems not so far fetched.