Pioltello and Rodano (former SISAS plant)

The chemical complex on the border between Pioltello and Rodano has been active since 1953. The SENTIERI site sheets list the Sisas, Carlo Erba Antibioticos, Air Liquide and CGT plants, authorised landfills and three illegal landfills of hazardous industrial waste. The waste included large amounts of carbon black.

Cadmium, hexavalent chromium, mercury, lead, zinc, heavy hydrocarbons, chlorinated aliphatic compounds and PCBs were found in soil and subsoil; hexavalent chromium, arsenic, chlorinated and aromatic compounds and a synthetic thiadiazole (MMTD) in groundwater.

SISAS went bankrupt in 2001 and the site was delimited as a SIN in the same year, over about 83 hectares. On 9 September 2004 the European Court of Justice ruled against Italy for failing to clean up the area. In January 2009 ISPRA put the environmental damage at about 320 million euro and the cost of removing the waste from the three landfills at 132 million. Removal only began in 2009; in April 2010 a civil protection ordinance appointed a commissioner for landfills A and B, and in July a 44.6 million euro contract was put out to tender to complete the excavation, with on-site treatment and off-site disposal.

Part of the waste went to the Nerva landfill in Andalusia: in December 2011 Greenpeace complained that it had been delivered without the required stabilisation treatment. With the landfills gone, soil and groundwater remain to be cleaned up.