Bussi Officine
| Bussi Officine | |||
|---|---|---|---|
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| Chemical plants in Bussi Officine | |||
| Country | Italy | ||
| region | Abruzzo | ||
| province | Pescara (PE) | ||
| local community | Bussi sul Tirino | ||
| Coordinates | 42 ° 12 ' N , 13 ° 51' E | ||
| height | 225 m slm | ||
| Telephone code | 085 | CAP | 65022 |
Bussi Officine is a fraction of the Italian commune Bussi sul Tirino in the province of Pescara , Abruzzo region .
geography
The district is located about 2 km southeast of the center of Bussi sul Tirino at the lower end of the valley of the same name through which the Tirino flows at an altitude of 225 m slm At Bussi Officine the Tirino flows into the Pescara .
history
Bussi di Officine was one of the first and most important locations for the electrochemical industry in Italy. The French-Swiss company Elettrochimica Volta opened the first plant as early as 1902 .
Beginnings
The first site surveys were carried out in 1898 and the first work was carried out with the generator driven by the Tirino from a mill that had previously been operated there, including the construction of a hydropower plant that provided the necessary electricity for the plant. The water-rich Tirino and the good transport connections soon led to an expansion of the factory for chlor-alkali electrolysis , which was the first of its kind in Italy.
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Were produced caustic soda , calcium chloride , sodium hypochlorite , hydrogen and hydrochloric acid . In 1907 Bussi di Officine was the location of the first factory in Italy that produced aluminum using the electrolysis process. During the First World War , production was adapted to war requirements and chemicals for explosives and chemical warfare agents such as phosgene were manufactured. In the post-war period, the location experienced a new boom with the production of water and nitrogen . The former was produced for airships , including the Norge used by Umberto Nobile on his flight over the North Pole in 1926 .
In 1921 the factory became the property of a subsidiary of Montecatini . The latter had a workers' settlement built in front of the factory gates in 1926, which at the time was one of the most modern of its kind and had numerous social facilities, including tennis courts and the first cinema in the Abruzzo region. Most of the settlement was later demolished in the second half of the 20th century.
In 1930, the production of chemical warfare agents was resumed and mustard gas was produced, which Mussolini used in the Abyssinian War despite the Geneva Protocol .
After the German occupation of Italy in September 1943, the factories were confiscated by the Germans, some of them continued to be operated and some of them dismantled .
After 1945
After the end of the Second World War, the reconstruction began and in the spirit of optimism of the 1950s, new production facilities were built in Bussi Officine and the place is called the Eldorado of the Abruzzo region.
Chemical production was back in full swing in the 1960s. From this time on the production of chloromethane began . The waste products from production , such as heavy metals , were directed into the Tirino, which flows into the Pescara after a few hundred meters. Legal investigations later revealed that up to a ton of heavy metals were discharged into the river in this way every day.
After Montecatini and Edison merged to form Montedison in 1966, the latter took control of the Bussi Officine location. Montedison introduced the production of tetraethyl lead as an anti-knock agent , while the waste products continued to flow into the Tirino. In 1971, up to 3 kg of lead residue per hour was removed in this way by discharging it into the river. In the following years, the amount of residues discharged into the Tirino rose to an hourly rate of 8.2 kg. In 1979, it was also discovered that around 200 g of mercury entered sewage every day .
At the end of 1980, Montedison handed over the production site to the subsidiary Ausimont. Including the hazardous waste dump opened in 1971 under pressure from the authorities on the banks of the Pescara River, where, as it turned out in 2007, toxic waste was deposited unprotected. In the 1980s, two other landfills north of Bussi Officine, including building rubble, were also used illegally as hazardous waste landfills.
In 1989, Montefluos, another subsidiary of Montedison, had a plant for the production of hydrochloric acid built in Bussi Officine. In 1990, however, the production of tetraethyl lead was discontinued. Between 1992 and 1994 the Turbogas-Edison gas-fired power station was built on the banks of the Pescara below the hazardous waste dump. In 2001 Ausimont undertook to remediate the contaminated factory premises, but left out the remediation of the contaminated groundwater. With the takeover of Ausimont by Solvay in 2002, the facilities in Bussi Officine also changed hands. In 2007 the production of chloromethane was stopped.
In 2016 the Solvay production facilities were taken over by the newly founded Società Chimica Bussi .
environment
The uncontrolled disposal of waste products from the chemical industry in Bussi Officine, especially heavy metals, has resulted in serious environmental pollution, not only in Bussi Officine.
When the toxic waste scandal was discovered in 2007, it was found that tons of waste products had been deposited on an area of 17 hectares. As a result, the area designated as the largest toxic waste dump in Europe was cordoned off by the authorities and, due to the severity of the case, classified as an area of national interest ( Italian Sito d'interesse nazionale (SIN) ) and placed under the Italian Ministry of the Environment .
Laboratory analyzes have shown that the soil is contaminated with highly toxic, mostly carcinogenic substances, including chloroform , hexachloroethane , carbon tetrachloride , trichloroethene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons . 500,000 tons of soil were contaminated, plus almost 1.5 million tons, if you include the entire area of the production facilities, with damage of around 8.5 billion euros.
The highest Italian health institute (Italian Istituto Superiore di Santità ) has emphasized that for decades at least 700,000 people in Val Pescara, including the provincial capitals Chieti and Pescara , have consumed contaminated drinking water, since several wells closed in 2007 below Bussi Officine was won. The local authorities had known since the 1970s that the drinking water was contaminated due to the systems in Bussi Officine without their intervention.
Despite the closure of the wells, concentrations of lead and mercury in surface groundwater were found in 2012 that exceeded the permitted limit values many times over, up to 61 times for lead and 2,100 times for mercury. In February 2017 it was also announced that the dioxin levels at the landfill were two hundred times above the legally permitted limit values.
In 2014, the former Montedison managers who had been called to account were acquitted in the first instance because of the limitation period. At the second instance, ten of them were sentenced to two to three years' imprisonment in 2017. In the third and last instance, she was finally acquitted by the Supreme Court of Cassation in 2018 due to insufficient evidence. By June 2018, only 1% of the area in question had been renovated.
In April 2020, the judgment of the Italian Supreme Administrative Court was published by the Consiglio di Stato , in which the Edison company, as the legal successor to Montedison, was finally sentenced to pay the costs of the renovation.
traffic
Strada Statale 5 Tiburtina leads past Bussi Officine . Bussi Officine also has a junction with the A25 motorway and the Busi train station on the Rome - Pescara railway line .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Bussi Officine. In: comune.bussi.pe.it. Retrieved April 24, 2020 (Italian).
- ↑ A.Arcolaci, CARidolfi: Bussi, la più grande discarica d'Europa e l'acqua a rischio dei Parchi d'Abruzzo. In: vanityfair.it. May 11, 2011, accessed April 19, 2020 (Italian).
- ^ Montecatini - Società generale per l'industria mineraria e chimica. In: archividellascienza.org. Retrieved April 19, 2020 (Italian).
- ↑ Sergio Camplone: Diario del progetto sul fiume Pescara - Appunti sulla chimica italiana. In: synapseeblog.tumblr.com. December 14, 2016, accessed April 26, 2020 (Italian).
- ↑ a b Michele Letto: Modeling numerica del sottosuolo relativa al disastro ambientale di Bussi sul Tirino. Tesi di Laurea Magistrale, Università di Bologna, Anno Academico 2015–2016, Sessione Marzo 2017 p. 23
- ↑ a b Michele Letto: Modeling numerica del sottosuolo relativa al disastro ambientale di Bussi sul Tirino. Tesi di Laurea Magistrale, Università di Bologna, Anno Academico 2015–2016, Sessione Marzo 2017 p. 24
- ^ Società Chimica Bussi. In: chimicafedeli.it. Retrieved April 26, 2020 (Italian).
- ↑ a b c d e Sito d'Interesse Nazionale “Bussi sul Tirino”. In: it.ejatlas.org. Retrieved April 26, 2020 (Italian).
- ↑ Inquinamento ambientale a Bussi ECCO i dati. In: abruzzolive.tv. April 29, 2013, accessed April 26, 2020 (Italian).
- ↑ Serena Giannico: Discariche Veleni Bussi sul Tirino 'A pagare la bonifica sia Edison'. In: abruzzolive.tv. April 6, 2020, accessed April 26, 2020 (Italian).