WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE HEART OF TUSCANY?

What follows is a communique for the press announcing the second annual conference of the Comitati Spontanei dei Cittadini (Citizen’s Committees) of the Province of Siena.
The administrators of the province boast the OECD’s choice of Siena both as the perfect example of ‘sustainable progress’ and the location of their next european meeting.
The number of citizen’s committees has mushroomed in the past few years.
They are opposing an incredible array of attacks to a so far incredibly unspoilt part of the world. These attacks range from incinerators to cell-phones antennae/masts, from huge power lines to deposit of toxic waste material, from the scandalous case of mass pollution of the river Merse
to the pharaonic projects of lifts and escalators to take you right up to that lovely, untouched, medieval village now of course totally spoilt first by the extravaganza of self-assessing architects and then by the ravages of (obviously escalating) mass tourism. And this is just a
selection.


Press communique

The Second Annual Conference of the Comitati Spontanei dei Cittadini of the Province of Siena will be held on Sat. 25 May at 10 a.m. in Siena.
In the year since the first Conference the number of Committees has risen from 32 to 42 (+30%) a further clear sign that the situation is becoming intolerable.
While in other areas of the country inefficiency, criminality and corruption had long produced the results we all see, our province was taken by surprise. It all started when the old generation of local politician, whose ambitions for power was matched by their moral integrity and sense of common good, was replaced by younger bolder administrators. We owe to these, indifferent to the large scale misuse of public funds, the discovery that our province, so far spared by the
grandiose works like huge car parks, escalators, high-power lines, antennae, incinerators, industrial plants etcetera, was therefore virgin ground for big business.
While busy with that they also find the time and the front to organize conferences promoting the ecologist soul of the territory of Siena and even to boast it as the world model of sustainable development. Why then, there are over forty citizen’s committees in the province?
The truth is that the citizens feel that the political class, left or right with no exceptions, is distant and hostile. The people blame them for the ongoing ecological catastrophes, which raise fears for their dimensions, like the pollution of the Mines of Campiano or the disaster caused by the exploitation of ‘geothermy’ on Mount Amiata. The entire
south of Tuscany, one of the best preserved environments of Europe, is at risk. More, although yet unquantifiable, risk will come from the incinerators on plan and from the new plants by the multinational companies of genetic engineering (Chiron and Bayer). To favour them the Montagnola, the small mountain overlooking Siena, will have to be scarred by a huge power line and the fields at Ampugnano will have to accomodate a full-size airport.
Everything on the taxpayer’s bill, of course.

Is the future of our children at stake in this area? This is probably the question we will have to debate.