On Wednesday 24 December in Il Sole 6 ore, Gian Maria Gros Pietro and Carlo De Benedetti tackled the problem of Ilva in Taranto from two opposite angles: that of reclamation aimed at the continuity of the iron and steel business (Gros Pietro) and that of reclamation (entirely paid by the State) aimed at the reconversion of the area (De Benedetti). While the first hypothesis appears realistic, even if difficult to implement, the second is instead completely unrealistic. Once the production activity has stopped, which the judges consider the cause of the pollution and therefore the source of the crime, the only thing the company is required to do is to make the plants and the area safe and ensure its supervision. The actual remediation, i.e. the preparatory one for a possible reuse of the site, can be postponed indefinitely. Unless it is the State, as De Benedetti suggests, that takes charge of it by assuming the costs in the (dubious) hope of being able to claim the property tomorrow, or a private group that does so in the belief that the future valorisation of the area can cover the costs of the cleanup. Two very remote and very unrealistic hypotheses.
The only certain effect of the cessation of production, requested by the Judiciary and desired by the Greens and, now, also by De Benedetti, would be the scrapping of the area and its subsequent and inevitable vandalisation. A huge economic, social and environmental disaster that can only be avoided if the path indicated by the decree law is followed: that is, the path of collaboration between the company, the institutions (including the Judiciary) and the trade union organizations to three years the plan for the environmentalization of the iron and steel cycle in the context of production continuity. It is a narrow road, indeed, very narrow, but not impossible to travel. We can do it.
Why, then, does De Benedetti oppose it? Not out of realism (it's useless to try, better leave it alone) but, I'm afraid, out of an anti-industrial prejudice. De Benedetti not only contests the management of Ilva by the Rivas, whose merits he does not recognize and which, on the contrary, he clearly dislikes, but he contests the very idea of having created a large integrated-cycle steel center in Taranto. Doing so was a mistake by IRI and the state, full stop. That Taranto marked a turning point in the history of the steel industry and that it was one of the levers of the Italian economic miracle seems to count for nothing. These are things of the past, just as Olivetti and, soon, Fiat too belong to the past. Industrial archaeology, the future is elsewhere, it is in the impalpable.
With all due respect, it must be said that De Benedetti is wrong: the manufacturing industry, and also the steel industry, is not only and remains fundamental for development but also has a great future ahead of it, provided obviously that it knows how to renew itself. In his recent "The new industrial revolution" Peter Marsh points to Arvedi (the Cremonese steelmaker) as an example of innovation in the iron and steel cycle of extraordinary importance on a global level and he says the same of Danieli, the Friulian company that builds steelworks all over the world. Even towards the Riva group he has words of appreciation.
If Oscar Senigallia (the father of the public steel industry) made a mistake, it was therefore not to build the Taranto plant as De Benedetti says but, if anything, to have succumbed to union pressure (first of all Trentin's Fiom) and political ( DC and PCI) to double that. The mistake, also by the judiciary, was that of not having denounced those local administrators who allowed the Tamburi district to expand up to the edge of the plant and who today are perhaps in the front row in complaining about the more than foreseeable consequences. These errors must be remedied and the way to do so is that of technological innovation of the entire production cycle which is indicated in the Integrated Environmental Authorization which is now law and which everyone, company, administrators and magistrates, hopefully, will undertake to respect.
De Benedetti said something right in his speech, however, and that is that the abandoned industrial areas, of which Italy is scattered, can and must be used as levers for the development of the territories. This is possible, in my opinion, on condition that the negative experience of Bagnoli is treasured. In Bagnoli the reclamation phase was separated from that of the reuse and enhancement of the areas for fear of speculation. A project was missing and a sole manager of its implementation was missing and the result was that the reclamation was done but the area is still a pile of scrap (as would inevitably happen in Taranto). Reclamation and the area's reuse project must instead go hand in hand and be headed by a single entity, just as both the public and private individuals must be able to contribute to the project. It was successfully done in Cardiff and if they succeeded in Wales, there's no reason we can't do it too.
