PFAS:The trial against Solvay for environmental disaster begins

The trial has officially begun before the Gup of the Court of Alessandria which sees the chemical giant Solvay in the dock for culpable environmental disaster.In fact, the industrial site of the company which produces, among other things, the toxic and persistent PFAS substances is located in the Piedmontese city.Last May 6, at the preliminary hearing, over 250 civil parties appeared before the judge, including environmental associations and institutions.There is talk of a very broad investigation, which specifically targeted two former Solvay managers, Stefano Bigini, plant director from 2008 until December 2018, and Andrea Diotto, director of the fluid and fluid production unit from 1 January 2013. from 1 September 2018 plant manager.The defense will file their briefs by 6 July, while an initial calendar of the hearings which will take place in the autumn has already been drawn up.Below the production center, the aquifer is the most contaminated in Europe by PFAS and recently the first contaminations in drinking water have been confirmed.For the moment, the cleanup plan is at a standstill and the pollution continues.

Both Bigini and Diotto must answer of the accusation of negligent environmental disaster for "having failed to provide for the most effective remediation of the previous contamination of the site and the safest containment of the release of contaminants both in the aquifer below the plant and downstream, where widespread contamination by PFAS is ascertained" , as stated in the documents of the Prosecutor's Office.The prosecutors charged the company with administrative responsibility, which was allegedly committed to the advantage and in the interest of the entity in order to save on reclamation costs and achieve greater effectiveness of industrial production.Among the "offended persons" are the Ministry of the Environment and the Piedmont Region, as well as local authorities, associations and citizens who have fallen ill and have expressed their desire to take civil action.At the end of March, Solvay itself - now Syensqo - detected high concentrations of PFAS under a tank used for cleaning production water.Specifically, we are talking about 250 thousand micrograms per liter of cC604, a chemical compound produced exclusively by the property and considered less toxic, although the Turin TAR has highlighted that it is still "a risk to health and the environment”.The company had attributed the contamination to the breakage of two valves critical for the operation of a reactor inside the tank, making it known that it had suspended compound production.Only a few weeks later, however, citizens reported to ARPA the presence of an unusual foam in the drain of the industrial center, which discharges waste water into the Bormida river.The company claimed that this foam was produced upstream of the drain and therefore free of contamination, but ARPA immediately disavowed it, declaring that it was directly connected to the system.

Last August it was tripped The preventive seizure of the chemical group's two gypsum landfills.The raid inside the plant - the second after that of 12 February 2021, which resulted in a vast search to verify the spill of polluting substances - was carried out by the NOE carabinieri at the request of the Alessandria Prosecutor's Office, authorized by the investigating judge.The tanks were seized because, according to the investigators, although they were no longer operational they would have been reused.Based on what was reconstructed by the magistrates, the landfills indeed contained substances coming from processing waste and water purification.Not having been protected by sheets or other types of coverings, they would have been subject to gusts of wind.The previous summer, the results of an important investigation carried out by the CHU University Hospital had been published (Center hospitalier universitaire) and the University of Liège, which they had registered the presence of high levels of Pfas in the blood of the residents in the housing area close to the Belgian multinational.

[by Stefano Baudino]