A clear no, no ifs or buts. It is that of the Superintendency of Cultural, Environmental and Landscape Heritage of Ragusa pronounced as part of the procedure initiated by the Region for obtaining the VIA-VAS environmental impact assessment. From the offices in Piazza Libertà, therefore, comes the negative opinion on the construction of a stone quarry to be covered with non-hazardous aggregates in the “Trippatore” district upstream from Sampieri. Will they ever be? Who will supervise the dumping of waste and what types will be delivered to the disused stone quarry which, with this new project, will be reborn and apparently in larger proportions than the existing one? Questions that go hand in hand with the procedure underway on which various parties will have to express their opinions. A great responsibility weighs on them because the quarry and what will be born is just over a kilometer and a half as the crow flies from the former Fornace Penna of Punta Pisciotto, the “Mànnara” that we see in the episode “The shape of ‘water” of Commissioner Montalbano, in which the Region has invested heavily by proceeding with its acquisition from private individuals, formalized a few months ago.
The Superintendent of Ragusa, Antonino De Marco, expressed the opinion of his office: it is a no.
Opinion that has already been sent to Palermo. “The opinion of my office is negative – he states – I consider the area of extraordinary landscape importance. The quarry is not compatible with the particularity of this territory. From a landscape perspective it is a territory of the highest value, which cannot be tortured or raped by a quarry. A no that has its good reasons, a territory of such beauty cannot hold such weight, not at all.”
The process of a project that involves the enlargement of a stone quarry and its covering with inert material.
The request for environmental impact assessment was presented to the Region with two different notes on 20 and 25 March by the Multi Service Italia company with registered office in Modica. Request that was “forwarded”, for the pronouncement-opinion, to the Mining District of Catania, to the Geological and Geophysical Service of the Regional Energy Department, to the Free Municipal Consortium of Ragusa, to the Departmental Forestry Inspectorate of Ragusa, to the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage , of the ARPA and the Basin Authority of the Hydrographic District of Sicily. “…All administrations and bodies potentially interested and in any case competent to express their opinion on the implementation and operation of the project” will have thirty days to verify the adequacy and completeness of the documentation” – this is what we read in the letter-communication. The first paragraph refers, in addition to the release of the EIA-VAS for the environmental impact, to a project concerning “the opening of a limestone quarry for which the sites will be completely filled and of a center for the recovery of non-hazardous inert waste in simplified procedure R13, put in reserve, and R5, recovery, in order to produce secondary raw material in the Trippatore district with the environmental impact assessment provision being effective for 15 years”.
There are many doubts among the many people who have chosen to live and invest in this pleasant and quiet area. An area that has all the characteristics of a lookout over the Mediterranean sea: just above sea level from it you can look at the large blue extension of the Channel of Sicily and you can also look at that great arboreal heritage typical of the Mediterranean scrub with carob trees , almond groves and olive groves spread among the network of dry stone walls close to being a UNESCO heritage site. Well, creating a landfill for non-hazardous aggregates, as the material that would be placed in the quarry is defined, requires a lot of courage. Courage in trampling on the healthiness of a territory that has already given a lot with stone quarries created galore, perhaps even without due vigilance. Scicli returns to the nightmare, taking a step back almost 30 years when the battle to save the San Biagio district from the establishment of a landfill was lost with heavy damage to the territory, to the municipal coffers and to the citizens.
