Former Ilva site: legal battle over the shutdown. City lawyers: no damage. The company responds: a flawed argument

A battle is raging between Acciaierie d’Italia and the lawyers representing the citizens of Taranto, who are calling for the shutdown of the hot section of the former Ilva plant in Taranto to be upheld in accordance with the ruling of the Milan Court of Appeal. The shutdown is due to take place by the end of October (90 days from 27 July), and on 9 September in Milan there will be a hearing at which the judges will examine the applications for a stay of execution submitted in recent days by both Acciaierie and Ilva, the operator and owner of the plant respectively. This concerns a stay of the Court’s decree, which has also been appealed to the Court of Cassation.

“The granting of a stay presupposes the existence of both the seriousness and the irreparability of the damage”, but “having demonstrated that the requirement of seriousness cannot be deemed to exist, it would be pointless to address the issue of irreparability”. Therefore, “the arguments regarding the alleged irreparability” are “entirely misleading and technically unfounded”. This is what lawyers Ascanio Amenduni and Maurizio Rizzo Striano, representing the citizens of Taranto and the association ‘Genitori Tarantini’, state in their statement of defence before the Court, as they seek to uphold the Court’s July decision, namely the shutdown of the plants.

Regarding the alleged irreparable damage to the plant infrastructure claimed by Acciaierie following the shutdown of the hot end, the two lawyers – refuting AdI’s arguments – state that there have already been “repeated shutdowns, including long-term ones” and therefore “if what is claimed were true, even AFOs 1, 2 and 4 would have had to be irreparably compromised and would no longer have been able to be restarted, which, on the contrary, has in fact happened on several occasions”. Furthermore, the lawyers retort to AdI, “if the conjectures put forward were true, one would have to conclude that the coking plants are already irreparably compromised, given that the shutdown has, to date, lasted more than 8 months. The prolonged shutdown of the coking plants is emblematic,” the lawyers state, “as it demonstrates the stubborn ‘malice’ with which human life and health are compromised or put at risk simply to secure a profit. The coking plants are the most polluting part of the facility and are the source of emissions of benzene and PAHs, including benzo[a]pyrene. It is argued that their prolonged shutdown has not halted steel production, as the necessary metallurgical coke was purchased from third parties on the market, where there is ample supply. This therefore provides evidence that profit continues to be prioritised at the expense of health.”

However, according to Acciaierie d’Italia, “the claims that previous plant shutdowns demonstrate the absence of any risk of irreversible damage are technically incorrect and based on a comparison between radically different situations”. “In the past,” argues Acciaierie d’Italia, “the blast furnaces were kept in a state of preservation by heating the Cowper stoves, precisely to preserve their integrity and enable them to be restarted at a later date. The Court of Appeal’s ruling, however, imposes an entirely different scenario, which does not allow the plants to be maintained in conditions that ensure their preservation.

The reference to coking plants is also misleading – AdI points out –. These were shut down as part of a specific technical and authorisation procedure managed in conjunction with Mase, which enabled the necessary measures to be taken to preserve them. There is therefore no comparison whatsoever between these situations and the shutdown imposed by the decree.”