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Chapter 10 Petrochemical Modernity in Sicily Salvatore Adorno Beginning in 1949, Sicily’s southeastern coast between Augusta and Siracusa was the protagonist in a story of sudden and tumultuous industrial development, creating one of the biggest European petrochemical centers in a twenty-year period. Between 1956 and 1959 alone, some 130 billion lire (about $200 million at 1959 exchange rates) were invested in industrial plants in this area, representing 15 percent of all industrial investments in southern Italy during the period and financed largely by special credit mechanisms of the Sicilian Regional Parliament (Assemblea Regionale Siciliana ). Between 1951 and 1961, the number of people employed by these industries amounted to about 13,000 workers, pushing up the employment rate by more than 7 percent. By the 1970s, petrochemical plants with names such as Raisom, Sincat, and Celene, owned variously by Esso, Montedison, and other companies, spread across some 2,700 hectares of coastal Sicily.1 In November 1990,the area was declared an environmental emergency. The declaration of risk and the successive cleanup plan showed extremely highlevelsof air,water,andlandpollution,resultinginaprofoundly disrupted ecological equilibrium. A water emergency stemming from indiscriminate Petrochemical Modernity in Sicily |  use of aquifers resulted in a subsiding water table and increasing levels of salinity. Industrial emissions of micro- and macropollutants caused frequent temperature inversions along with photosynthetic ozone and nonmethane hydrocarbons. Organic and inorganic dust accumulated. Illegal waste disposal along with petroleum and mercury by-products degraded marine waters, resulting in eutrophic processes and genetic transformation of sea life. The lack of a safety zone between storage areas and population Map 10.1. Location of petrochemical industries, Augusta, Sicily  | Salvatore Adorno centers exacerbated human exposures to industrial and urban wastes. The whole area presented high seismic risks, and beyond that, industrial plants were sited near precious natural and archaeological resources, such as the Greek ruins of Megara Iblea.2 Comparing this image with those offered in the 1960s by the rather cheerful analyses of industrialization provided by Gabriele Morello, Eugenio Peggio, Mario Mazzarino, Valentino Parlato, and Franco Leonardi, one can understand the gap that had grown between the expectations and the problems in the intervening thirty years.3 The perspectives of these sociologists and economists described the sudden and traumatic transition from a primarily agricultural society to an industrial one. But this transition was told in terms of rising incomes, increasing consumer capacities, and improving employment rates. And even when these analysts acknowledged the imbalances of the new development models, such as the connections to interests of private monopolies , the risks of developing a local economy based only on the chemical industry, and the challenges of heavily subsidized industries, they painted a basically optimistic picture of Sicily’s petrochemical development. It should be noted that those studies were silent with regard to environmental costs and hazards, reflecting just how absent such concerns were during those years. There was almost no mention of theoretical considerations or popular opinions regarding environmental threats. Only since the 1970s has the environmental question begun gaining political and social ground, becoming a key consideration in the process of industrialization. The environmental question would eventually supersede other considerations centered on employment and development. Indeed, during the second half of the seventies, development and environment came to be seen as interrelated: on the one hand was the economic crisis of chemicals worsened by an international oil embargo,4 and on the other were the first signs of a national environmental crisis, manifested in the chemical spills at Seveso and Manfredonia, along with local Sicilian fish die-offs, neonatal malformations, industrial plant fires, large-scale poisonings, and recognition of dropping water tables.5 At this stage, the data gathered on environmental and health indicators were intertwined with legal sanctions for environmental violations. The knowledge and measurement of environmental phenomena, together with respect for and application of regulations, took a central role in the building of a new awareness of environmental questions as a strategic object for development . The rest of this paper focuses on the ramifications of this new environmental awareness.6 Petrochemical Modernity in Sicily |  Air Pollution: Laws and Environmental Networks It is well known that the Italian legislative process has been prone to delay in matters dealing with environmental protection, as well as in the fragmentation and limited effectiveness of implementing regulations to control pollution, at least up to the 1970s. One might consider the consequences that such delays had on the highly industrialized area of Siracusa. Air pollution was regulated in Italy...

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