All defendants cleared over Bussi dump

(ANSA) - Chieti, December 19 - A court in the central Italian city of Chieti on Friday acquitted all 19 defendants in a trial into a toxic waste dumped by now-defunct Montedison chemical company at Bussi sul Tirino, near Pescara. The court cleared the defendants of the crime of water poisoning and reclassified another charge, environmental disaster, to culpable disaster and ruled that the statue of limitations had passed on this. The dump of toxic waste was discovered in 2007.
    The Montediso managers were put on trial in November 2013 for illegally burying 250,000 tonnes of toxic waste near a river in the Pescara area, contaminating the water table and the public water supply with heavy metals.
    Toxic spills reached as much as one tonne daily into the Tirino River, prosecutors during the trial.
    They also alleged that the managers knew that acid in waste dumped at Bussi sul Tirino could melt cement containers and contaminate water tables.
    Experts from Italy's Higher Institute for Health (ISS) told the trial in one hearing that people living in and around Pescara had been eating mercury-contaminated vegetables since 1981.
    Mercury was found in fish and in the hair of Pescara-area fishermen as far back as 1972, the ISS added in a court-evidence report.
    Contaminated water was distributed to roughly 700,000 people for years throughout a vast part of central Italy as a result, the ISS found.
    The ISS added that lead contamination was also a concern.
    The State body said "even hospitals and schools" in the province of Pescara were victims of poisons that infiltrated the water supply near Bussi sul Tirino, a small town located between two national parks and about 40 km from Pescara.
    Since 1901, Bussi has been an industrial site producing chemicals for both civilian and military use including tear gas, poison gas, explosives, and alloys for armored vehicles.
    Beginning in the 1960s, the area's plants came under the control of Montedison, with production focusing on other highly toxic materials such as tetraethyl lead and methyl chloride.
    Much of the area's population worked for Montedison, a large industrial chemicals producer active from the 1960s to the 1990s.