FROM THE HEAVENS TO THE EARTH
I HAVE WRITTEN ON 15TH APRIL 2009:
SICILY, LAND BLESSED BY GOD, GALILEE OF THE GENTILES.
MY SICILY, OUR SICILY, LAND OF DIVINE SIGNS AND PRODIGIES AND LAND OF MARTYRS TO JUSTICE. BUT ALSO LAND OF MAFIA AND CORRUPTION.
DID YOU THINK THAT OUR SICILY COULD ALSO BE ONE OF THE LARGEST RADIOACTIVE WASTE DEPOSITS IN THE WORLD?
UNFORTUNATELY THIS IS THE TRUTH. FOR THIS REASON PART OF MY FIGHT AGAINST THE ANTICHRIST TAKES PLACE HERE. HERE WHERE THE FETID EXCREMENTS OF THE ANTICHRISTIC NUCLEAR MIND ARE BURIED. ON MY LAND.
DESPITE THIS, OUR BATTLE CARRIES ON, CERTAIN THAT IT WILL BE WON BY OUR KING: THE CHRIST.
READ, MEDITATE AND DEDUCE.
GIORGIO BONGIOVANNI
STIGMATIST
SANT? ELPIDIO A MARE, (ITALY)
15TH APRIL 2009
Radioactive Sicily: the Pasquasia case
By Giorgio Bongiovanni and Monica Centofante
During the days in which Nuclear Power seems to be the only option available to face the Energy needs of our country, there is a small town, in the heart of Sicily, which shows that this cannot and shall not be the case.
Its name is Pasquasia, in the province of Enna, known in the past for its alkaline Salt mines, and in particular for Kainite, used to produce potassium sulphate. From the sixties to 1992 this site provided work for thousands of people, and since then, it seems to have been causing death.
During the golden years, Italkali, the company managing the surface mine, was the world?s third supplier of potassium salts ? yet the top regarding quality ? and employed 500 people directly and just as many indirectly. This company could have carried on that way, but in 1992 it had to shut down for some unknown reason, totally unexpectedly, causing many people to lose their job in an area with high unemployment, raising no reaction among the politicians. The official reason for the closure has never been released, but among the population rumours say that the mine was to be used to host radioactive waste. Medium-level radioactive waste of which the population would not have heard anything about, reason why the protests were followed by utter silence.
In 1996 the MP, Hon. Giuseppe Scozzari tried to break this silence as the year before at a conference in Washington he heard that the Sicilian mine was among those ?half-dozen sites perfectly fit? where ?in Europe it is stored waste of low and medium activity?.
Scozzari had investigated the case and requested a parliament interrogation and tried to visit the site, expecting to find just criminals around. But actually, if those lands supposedly belong to people in odour of mafia, it is also true that the Italian and international institutions denied the entry. That is the same way they deny the presence of radioactive material, notwithstanding the analysis made in 1997 by USL which revealed the presence of Cesium 137, whose concentration was higher than normal. Thus, not only it was ascertained the presence of radioactive waste, but there has even been an unexpected nuclear accident which caused the escape of radioactivity due to experiments carried out to check that the soil is fit to contain radiations.
A tragedy for the neighbours, kept under utter silence.
The first person who mentioned radioactive waste in the Pasquasia mine was the mafioso turned informant Leonardo Messina, back in 1992, member of the Cosa Nostra cupola, as he worked there as crew chief. According to his account ? considered reliable on this point by the National Antimafia Judge Pierluigi Vigna ? the illegal activities had been carrying on since 1984 in that area: back then ENEA (National body for Nuclear energy) conducted a geological, geochemical and microbiological study on the clay bed and its resistance to nuclear waste. At the same time SISDE requested the authorisation to the town authority to dispose of non-specified military waste. This would prove the mine to be used as a waste deposit much before its decommissioning, and would explain the reason why since 1992 the regional Body of mines stopped patrolling and keeping on maintenance the site, as the job passed to four private security companies, currently not operating anymore.
In 1997 the court of Caltanissetta demanded an inspection in a gallery 50 metres deep, built inside the mine by ENEA, and noticed a few detection probes left by the body, but it was not clear what they were meant to detect. Could it be radioactivity?
In the same year, also Hon. Ugo Maria Grimaldi, regional councillor of Environment and Territory in Sicily, tried to enter Pasquasia with technicians and experts. Just like Scozzari, he found great resistance. ?They absolutely did not want cameras to get in ? he told to an interview released to Ennaonline on 16th March 2001. They didn?t want the wells to be seen. When I entered, I saw one of those 15 metres wide wells, which were originally meant to let air in, completely filled up to be properly shut for good. Hundreds of tons of material had been used to fill the hole, as to hide something?.
In the same interview Grimaldi mentioned an epidemiological study carried out by the oncologist Dr. Maurizio Cammarata from the Hospital of Enna, that in 1997 detected a worrying increase of leukaemia and tumours in the range of 20% between the years 1995/96. ?I denounced that the whole of Sicily was to become Europe?s landfill. I have pointed out the presence of asbestos everywhere?. I was accused to be alarmist, so politicians and institutions left me on my own. Yet the alarm was raised by the worrying data of tumours in a city virtually free from pollution caused by industries compared to other cities, so these data was very worrying?. Also, ?I remember very well that at the time I was visited by the General Commander of NOE (ecological operative Body of Carabinieri) from Rome, who confirmed that he was also sure that Pasquasia hosted radioactive waste?.
Grimaldi?s initiatives failed like Scozzari?s, so the issue was forgotten until last year when Angelo Severino, director of the magazine L?Ora Siciliana opened the case again, citing the existence of documents that would give the evidence of nuclear waste in the mine.
Today after all, the situation could get even worse.
Already in 2003 the ministers Matteoli, Marzano, Giovanardi, Pisanu and the undersecretary Letta indicated Pasquasia as one of the twenty national sites suitable to store radioactive material just like other saline deposits considered for years particularly suitable for the lack of water. This was explained by Prof. Massimo Scalia, from the University La Sapienza of Rome, who also added that this was proven false when in New Mexico a deposit was flooded by a large quantity of ?Ancient Water? trapped in the rocks. But since we are in Italy and since this was not accounted for, the first appointed solution was Scanzano in Basilicata (other site with Rock Salt) and then five other Sicilian sites, among which Pasquasia.
But the worst is yet to come, since possibly since 2010 in the town near Enna there could also be stored waste classified HLW of third category, that is the waste whose radioactivity decades after thousands of years.
According to L?Ora siciliana, should this happen, things would get even worse, since if this was the case, ?we would wonder where goes the large amount of money granted by Euratom to the innocent victims and for the final deposit of radioactive waste in Pasquasia?.
In the midst of all this, last 25th February the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the French president Nicolas Sarkozy signed in Rome an agreement for the construction of four new nuclear power stations in Italy.
Should this take place, our country will have to face again the problem of waste and of suitable places for their deposit. But in a land where the deposit is still unresolved, what will happen with new power stations?
This question does not seem to be in the political agenda, yet people are dying in Enna.
15th April 2009
