In the last week there were two meetings in Villanova with Fabio Anselmo and Sabrina Pignedoli and, says Maria Teresa Pistocchi of the 5 Star Movement, “un choral SOS rises from the small rural hamlets of the Municipality of Ferrara”. Hamlets “that are depopulating and experiencing all the same problems: isolation due to lack of public mobility services, poor care of the territory, lack of commercial activities, bad roads, zero cycle paths, aging population, closed schools, lack of health facilities” .
“In addition to all this – continues Pistocchi -, in these border territories it often happens that the great work imposed from above arrives as a surprise without any involvement of the local population, as would instead be foreseen, Pignedoli recalled, by the recommendations of the European Union; this is what happened in Villanova where, on an agricultural area of 14 hectares, a large plant for the production of biomethane should be established, partly financed with Pnrr money”.
The authorization process began about 2 years ago and has not yet been completed. “Hitherto characterized by reversals of political positions, exceptions and variations to building regulations and extensions of time, as well as by analyzes and technical and regulatory opinions of an embarrassing superficiality, both on the part of politics and of the bodies responsible for evaluation, control and supervision”.
Pistocchi notes that “the numerous implications of such complex systems would require high levels of knowledge in the industrial, energy, agronomic, environmental and logistical fields, but none of this is apparent from the various written opinions and conversations held in recent years between the citizens’ committee , prepared and aggressive, and their public interlocutors”.
What would emerge from a first reading of the cards is. according to the pentastellata, that “the consolidated game of Chinese boxes with intersecting companies and frontmen and the inevitable foreign giant as the final beneficiary; the lack of essential data for the evaluation; the deceptions of the lowland forest for mitigation and of biomethane means of transport that do not yet exist, a list of suppliers not supported by any contract”.
These and many other things would be the basis for unmasking the colossal private business passed off as a public utility, for energy transition, for circular economy, but until now it seems that no one has picked them up”. It would then be “very serious if control agencies such as Arpae and the numerous bodies participating in the services conference were not able to investigate and evaluate the heavy environmental and social impact of a plant of that size, first of all the unsustainable increase of traffic on inadequate road arteries (via Pomposa primarily) and the consequent level of disturbance, risk and increase in emissions into the atmosphere”.
“The ‘cui prodest’ – concludes Pistocchi – remains to be understood and unmasked, which is why what Pignedoli requested in Europe and so far denied, i.e. a transparent register of the final beneficiaries of European public funds, would be of great help. The M5S has opposed the Villanova power plant from the beginning and is confident that it will soon be able to involve the former environment minister Sergio Costa in support of this battle”.
