SULMONA – Anti-Snam activists enter the power plant construction site: “We have carried out an action of civil obedience to denounce the illegalities taking place. Whoever is responsible should act.”
Today activists for the climate, against fossil fuels and for the development of renewable energy sources entered the Case Pente construction site in Sulmona, where Snam intends to build its compression station to serve the Linea Adriatica methane pipeline: a large useless and harmful work that should cross the most highly seismic territories of the Apennines.
The activists carried flags and signs reading: “The Snam construction site is illegal”. ,“Snam out of our territory”, “Methane killer of the climate”, “We will not allow the history of the ancient Peligni to be erased”, “Spending 2 billion and 500 million on a useless and harmful work is an economic crime”, “No to fossil fuels, let’s save the planet.”
The activists, from Sulmona and other places in Abruzzo, remained inside the construction site for about half an hour, chanting slogans and explaining the reasons for the initiative to the press present on site. The internal security of the construction site and the police arrived shortly afterwards without intervening. The security men limited themselves to observing from afar and the police did not enter the construction site, limiting themselves to taking the activists’ details once they left.
At the end of the action the environmentalists issued the following statement:
“Ours was an action of nonviolent civil “obedience”, carried out to publicly denounce the illegality and violence that Snam is perpetrating against the territory.
The construction site opened by Snam in Case Pente is illegal because the building authorization lapsed on 7 March 2023. The works could only be started on condition that the “ante operam” requirements were fulfilled. But this did not happen. Snam openly violated the 2011 EIA Decree, without any authority intervening.
The construction of the power plant represents an outrage to our history. We will not allow around 100 tombs dating back to Italic and Roman times, evidence of the ancient Peligni people, to disappear forever under tons of concrete for Snam’s profits. We ask that the archaeological restriction be placed on the Case Pente area.
The harmful substances emitted by the power plant will worsen the quality of the air and therefore the health of citizens. The Peligna basin is a closed valley, with poor ventilation and subject to the phenomenon of thermal inversion. The pollutants from the power plant will stagnate in the air and fall to the ground, entering the food chain.
The construction of the Linea Adriatica Snam power plant and gas pipeline represents an economic crime because the cost of the work (two billion and 500 million euros) will be paid largely by Italian citizens, and the Pnrr money could instead be spent on a real transition ecological by financing systems powered by renewable energy.
It is also a crime against the climate because the new useless fossil plants will accentuate climate change, with consequent enormous risks for populations and very serious damage to economic activities, agriculture in the first place. In fact, methane is a climate-altering gas that is more than 80 times more powerful than CO2 in the first 20 years of its presence in the atmosphere.
It is also an environmental crime because the construction of the power plant and the methane pipeline will upset the areas of the Apennines, with irreversible damage to biodiversity: millions of trees will be cut down due to the burying of the gas pipeline, and the area of the power plant is a corridor fauna of the Marsican brown bear, protected by Europe as a species at very high risk of extinction”.
