Dfter the seizure of the wells used for domestic use and irrigation and found to be contaminated by arsenic, the seizure of the land – covering 26 thousand square meters – where the wells are located has also arrived in the former Saint Gobain industrial area, between the city of Caserta and the neighboring municipality of San Nicola la Strada. It was the Public Prosecutor's Office of Santa Maria Capua Vetere that issued the emergency seizure decree – confirmed by the GIP – after the results of the core sampling of the land under investigation arrived from the Arpac laboratories, which revealed a situation of pollution from industrial substances, such as arsenic, beryllium, trichloroethane, present in quantities that greatly exceed, from six to fourteen times, the contamination threshold established by law. Substances already present in the aquifer, as ascertained in the first phase of the investigation, which last February led to the seizure of the 12 contaminated wells, where the presence of approximately 9000 milligrams per litre of arsenic emerged, an “abnormal quantity” according to the prosecutor of Santa Maria Capua Vetere Maria Antonietta Troncone (the legal threshold is 10 mg). The Carabinieri of the Caserta Ecological Operations Unit and those of the Environmental, Agri-food and Forestry Police Investigation Unit carried out the investigations and executed the seizures. The area where the wells and contaminated land were seized was known in the 60s and 70s as the “red pool”: there was in fact a quarry, on the bottom of which stagnated sewage containing arsenic and other chemical substances, residues of the iron and glass processing activity, near the Saint Gobain industry. “The pollution of the area,” Troncone said in February, “is the consequence of the industrial activity carried out by the Saint Gobain factory from 1958, when the area was used for agriculture, to 1988, when the company was closed.” In 30 years, it emerged, the adjacent quarry was filled with waste. In the area, moreover, the Prosecutor noted, “there is a high incidence of tumors, especially of the prostate, even if it is not possible to establish a causal link between the pollution caused by the industrial activity and these deaths.” Even the owner of one of the seized areas died a year ago from prostate cancer, “a pathology that seems to be linked precisely to the contamination by arsenic,” Troncone explained at the time, “which is the second most carcinogenic chemical substance.”
Article published on 14 June 2019 - 12:19
