It is clear to everyone that the archiving of the project for the large biomethane plant in Via San Rocco has not only a technical value, but above all a political impact.
The Galimberti-Virgilio council had focused heavily on the realization of the Cremona 20-30 project which also included the construction of the industrial biomethane plant. He did it uncritically, without any prudence, renouncing the role of guarantor of the Cremonese population, but above all imposing on the city a decision taken far from Cremona, by the PD leaders, exactly like the choice to sell off LGH to A2A without a tender, in a path devoid of transparency.
Cremona 20-30 represented the fig leaf under which to hide the failure of the promise to shut down the waste-to-energy plant, thanks to which the left won the elections in 2014 and 2019.
Forza Italia immediately highlighted publicly and in the City Council the lack of feasibility of that plan, summarized in the January 2021 Memorandum signed by Galimberti and Virgilio, receiving in exchange derision from the members of the left-wing majority.
Even the well-founded findings put forward by the Mayors of Gerre de’ Caprioli and Bonemerse and by the BiometaNo Committee were dismissed with the arrogance that was the true hallmark of the outgoing administration.
The environmental, landscape, hydrogeological, urban planning and infrastructural critical issues relating to the biomethane plant project in via San Rocco were known to everyone from the beginning. The technical opinions produced by the supervisory bodies in previous service conferences left no room for misunderstanding. The location of the biomethane plant was and remains wrong, and the archiving of the project is the right epilogue to a story which also demonstrates the superficiality with which issues which, by their nature, are complex were treated.
Today the king is naked: LGH was sold off to A2A without a public tender, the Cremona waste-to-energy plant will not be shut down or reconverted (dedicated resources are not foreseen in A2A’s industrial plan) and the fig leaf of the Cremona 20-30 project is fall.
The new Municipal Administration will be called to rethink the energy future of Cremona and its territory. It will have to do this by engaging with citizens and rebuilding a relationship with A2A and other energy operators based on transparency and mutual respect.
The left, and with it Virgilio, who today, with the project rejected, speaks of a rigor never requested before, has failed. We cannot hand our future back into the hands of those who are leading us into the abyss. It’s time to move on.
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