GB No. 1(20)/96

THERMOSELECT IN ZGIERZ

In November 1995 the Town Council in Zgierz resolved to establish the partnership "Interselect" with the Italian firm CO.GE.S., an intermediary of another Italian company Thermoselect Srl. The aim of the partnership is to build a waste incineration plant.

The incinerator is to burn 150 thousand tons annually: hazardous and industrial waste is planned to make 60% of the total. As there is not a sufficient hazardous waste supply to be found in Zgierz, it is assumed that it will be brought from other places, probably even from all over Poland.

The investment costs, amounting to 191 million Mark, are to be covered by foreign credits as well as home finances: from funds for environmental protection as well as town budgets.

In relation to the above investment Greenpeace International alerted the Waste Prevention Association "3R" (Ogólnopolskie Towarzystwo Zagospodarowania Odpadów - OTZO) to the criminal activities of the Thermoselect company. According to the Public Prosecutor's Office in Verbania, Italy, where a Thermoselect pilot plant is located, and to the ecological organisation OPEN, Belgium, one can find that:

• Thermoselect has violated Italian environment-protection regulations many times, e.g. by illegally storing toxic waste on its grounds and emitting pollutants into the water and air that exceed permitted limits.
• the company has frequently acted without required permits or bribed officials to obtain concessions;
• in 1992 five members of the Thermoselect Board were sentenced to 3-5 years imprisonment for violation of the law;
• lately the Italian Public Prosecutor has commenced an investigation into law offense committed by the management of Thermoselect.

Bearing in mind all of the above facts, OTZO demands that the Zgierz Town Council shall give up the Thermoselect incinerator building plan and stop wasting public funds for the project that has not been thoroughly studied. Instead, actions aimed at implementing of environmentally-friendly methods of waste management should be initiated.

THE CRIMINAL ACTIVITY OF THERMOSELECT

• In spring 1990 the Director of the Idealgo Srl. company, Günter Kiss had an experimental plant for waste pyrolysis built in Verbania, Italy.

  The local community alarmed by emissions from the plant turned to the authorities with a question whether the company had permits required for this kind of enterprise. What appeared was that Kiss had no such concession and the waste utilisation was illegal. The authorities decided to shut down the plant.
  
  

• In October 1990 Kiss applied to the authorities of Piemont, Italy, for concession to put into operation another pyrolysis plant for municipal waste, of capacity 1 ton per day. Without all necessary permits the plant was started.
  
  
• In January 1991 Idealgo Srl. changed its name to Thermoselect Srl. and, officially, Günter Kiss ceased to be a Board Member. A German citizen, Franz Jurgen Riegel became the President of the company; the Board was then also joined by Ise Marie Gudula-Freitag (PR), Renato Viviani and Emanuele Lanteri. At that time Thermoselect was controlled by the company Rheticus A.G. registered in Liechtenstein.
  
  
• On 6^th March 1991 an explosion in the Thermoselect plant left two employees injured and destroyed a part of the appliances. Despite this fact, the company carried on its activity.
  
  
• Also in March 1991, Thermoselect applied for concession to build a new experimental plant for municipal waste utilisation, of capacity 100 tons per day.

  The Technical Committee of the region permitted the company to build a new installation within 3 months, put it into operation and carry on experiments within another 6 months, and then to dismantle the plant within 3 months after the license expiration date.

  Since the project was presented as experimental, the Committee did not demanded Thermoselect to obey environmental protection law.

  At the beginning of January 1992 the installation was completed.

  The fact that the permit was issued for utilisation of such a large amount of waste seems worthy of attention: in experimental plants of this kind small quantities are burnt - up to several hundreds of kilograms per day.
  
  

• At the end of January 1992 a local ecological organisation applied to the Public Prosecutor in Verbania to examine the Thermoselect plant.

  In the course of the investigation it was discovered that hazardous waste was illegally being stored on the grounds.

  In June 1992 Prosecutor Antonio Simone had the installation stopped and applied to the court for punishing the management of Thermoselect for breaking the environmental protection law as well as forgery.

  Günter Kiss was sentenced to 11 months imprisonment and the other members of the Board - 3 to 6 months.

  Nevertheless, in October 1992 the plant was put into operation again.
  
  

• In October 1992 a local ecological group from Verbania came into possession of a copy of a tender issued by the company CO-VER. The document disclosed information about transport of waste from the Thermoselect plant and their dumping this waste into the landfill. According to the paper, in the Thermoselect plant 60 tons of solid waste per day was generated as well as 13 tons of contaminated gypsum (originating from exhaust gasses neutralisation) and 8 tons of metal oxides per month.

  The data is utterly contradictory to Thermoselect's claims that the company managed to find a technology capable of total waste utilisation, reprocessing waste to useful products (gas, building materials and metal scrap) and, at the same time, of generating as little as 1% waste that demands storing. Standard incinerators generate a half less amount of waste that has to be stored.
  
  

• At the beginning of 1993 the Thermoselect installation was granted a status of a power plant by Director of Air Protection Department at the Italian Environmental Protection Ministry, Corrado Clini. despite the fact that the plant did not produce power (electricity, industrial steam).

  Thanks to the above decision the Thermoselect plant was not obliged to obey environmental protection law that applies to waste incinerators.
  
  

• In April 1993 two explosions took place in the plant.
  
  
• At the same time, the investigation resumed by the Public Prosecutor in Verbania. The investigation revealed another illegal storage of toxic waste on the grounds of the Thermoselect plant. By the Prosecutor's order the installation was shut down for one month.
  
  
• On 23^rd June 1995 the Mayor of Verbania, Aldo Reschigna, ordered Thermoselect to stop dumping sewage into the municipal sewage system due to high content of chlorides (1760 mg/l), ammonia nitrogen and zinc (14,5 mg/l each) in the examined samples. [The content of lead detected (3,45 mg/l) exceeds the Polish norm 7 times.]
  
  
• June 1995 again. Thermoselect caused two corruption scandals in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.

  The reason for the first scandal was the fact that in 1991 Günter Kiss offered an 800 thousand Swiss Franc bribe to the paper Il Mattino, connected with the political party Lega del Ticino.

  At the end of 1994 Thermoselect tried to bribe a member of a tender commission responsible for the selection of waste utilisation technology to be applied in Ticino.

  Both the bribes were to enable Thermoselect to win the contract for building an incinerator in Switzerland. (Eventually, the canton authorities abandoned the incinerator scheme in favor of an alternative method of waste management.)
  
  

• In December 1995 the Public Prosecutor in Verbania launched an anti-corruption investigation against Günter Kiss and Corrado Clini, Director of the Ministerial Department mentioned above.
  
  
• In February 1996 Thermoselect caused another scandal - this time in Germany.

  With help of bribed officers, the company tried to secretly change conditions of the contract for building a municipal waste incinerator in Karlsruhe. In permits granted earlier the limits of heavy metals emission were changed from 0,01 mg to 0,03 mg. Moreover, by means of a forged enclosure to the contract the company tried to have incineration of the hazardous (special) waste allowed.

  Legal proceedings have been instituted against Thermoselect and the corrupt officers. The City Office in Karlsruhe, in turn, will have to sue their own decision of permitting Thermoselect to build a plant.

Paweł Głuszyński
translated by M. Maciejewska

Pictures come from the protest meeting against Thermoselect plant in Zgierz.