Environmental Disaster in the Land of Fires: Citizens Demand Justice

Dozens of environmentalists, volunteers from associations and citizens of the Land of Fires, demonstrated this morning in front of the Naples Courthouse to demand the seizure of the assets of the Pellini brothers, entrepreneurs from Acerra who were definitively convicted in recent years for aggravated environmental disaster. Some protesters, including mothers who have lost their children, also symbolically tied themselves to the railings of the courthouse fence, asking for "justice". "We have submitted a request for access to documents to the Ministry of the Environment to acquire, even at our expense, all the documentation related to the environmental damage action exercised by the Ministry for the environmental disaster ascertained in our territory. However, there is a risk that the already dated inertia of the Ministry of the Environment may lead to the prescription of the liquidation of the environmental damage." Andrea Piatto, spokesperson for the minority council of Acerra, who this morning, along with other colleagues from the opposition, participated in the demonstration organized by environmental associations in front of the Naples Courthouse to demand the seizure of the Pellini brothers' assets, entrepreneurs definitively convicted in recent years for aggravated environmental disaster. The demonstration was organized following the verdict, in recent days, of the Supreme Court which established the return of the confiscated assets to the entrepreneurs due to the expiry of terms. "The cancellation of the preventive seizure," added Andrea Piatto, "is a defeat for the State, incapable of respecting the rules it has set itself, including those that require the Ministry of the Environment to promote an initiative before the Civil Judge to ensure compensation for the damage resulting from the environmental disaster caused by the polluters. We have therefore advanced a request for access to documents to the Ministry of the Environment to acquire all the documentation related to the environmental damage action exercised by the Ministry, including expert opinions or consultations relating to the alteration of the environmental state, as well as a copy of the administrative or judicial acts proposed for the quantification and liquidation of the environmental damage. This matter is very serious. And now there is the risk of a prescription even of the liquidation of the environmental damage." "We are also physically alongside the associative realities," he concluded, "that have been seriously engaged in this dispute for years, but light years away from the pre-electoral theatrics of subjects also responsible, at least politically, for what happened."