The shadow of the crime of “omission” hovers over Pili
Query in City Council requests that the Mayor respond to reminders from the Ministry and inform the Procura.
By Gianni Favarato
VENEZIA. A new query to the Mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, has been issued by City Councilors Felice Casson, Rocco Fiano, Giovannin Pelizzato, Francesca Faccini, Renzo Scarpa and Ottavio Serena, urging him to provide his response not only to the City Council’s open questions surrounding the environmental situation at the area called Pili, but also to the Venetian agencies Cgil, Cisl and Uil who have given him an “ultimatum” regarding the subjects of development, remediation and the re-industrialization of Porto Marghera.
As it stands, Brugnaro is not accustomed to responding to questioning and demands. He has done even less about the possible crime of “omission” – raised many times by the Ministry of the Environment – for the absence of preventative measures against the health and environmental risks caused by the state of contamination at Pili, where the Mayor would like to see a new stadium for Reyer constructed. Brugnaro has not responded to the formal query presented more than a month ago by counselor and former magistrate Felice Casson concerning “the serious state of contamination” at Pili. This area has been owned by the Mayor’s company, Porta di Venezia spa, for 12 years. Brugnaro has also not responded to the counselors of the Gruppo Misto, Ottavio Serena and Renzo Scarpa who more than a month ago asked him to, in his role as Mayor of Venice, inform the Procura della Repubblica di Venezia of the “failure to meet the obligation to adopt measures to prevent health and environmental risks”, which have been raised repeatedly by the Ministry of the Environment as well. Scarpa and Serena, however, received a response from Derek Donadini, vice-chair of the Mayor’s cabinet and also current administrator of his business, “Porta di Venezia”, which sought only to “preclude the existence of any circumstances of the crime of omission”. Scarpa and Serena have also called for the creation of an “investigative commission to verify information and gain better understanding regarding the situation and the assumptions about recovery and development of the Pili area”. This request was blocked without much discussion by the majority counselors of the Prima commission and seems to have disappeared completely, despite the fact that the obligation exists to take the request for the formation of an investigative commission to the City Council to be put to a vote.
Faced with the many missing answers from the Mayor, a new formal query to Mayor Brugnaro was presented last Friday by the counselors of the Gruppo Misto and the Lista Casson, with a request for a written response. The query points out the legal obligation of the City Administration – emphasized also by the Ministry of the Environment – to prevent “health and environmental risks deriving from the situation of contamination in the Pili area, caused by industrial waste (phospogypsum) from the production of phosphoric acid”. In the query the opposition councilor ask the Mayor to clarify if his vice chair of Cabinet Donadini had responsed to Serena and Scarpa, with a letter of last 13 April “in his institutional role either/or in his role as Director pro-tempore of Porta di Venezia,” to which the Ministry of the Environment had sent the demand that Pili be made safe.
Source, La Nuova Venezia, 22 April 2018
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