The EconomistFebruary 29th 2020 Europe 45D
r grazia parisihas been working for
four hours without a break at her paed-
iatric surgery. “I’ve seen between 30 and 35
children—all with coughs,” she says. It is
Monday. The previous week, from Wednes-
day to midday on Friday, Taranto, in Italy’s
far south, had endured a succession of
what the locals call “wind days”. That is
when the wind blows from the north-west,
through Europe’s biggest steelworks on the
outskirts, and into the city.
“There is a mathematical correlation
between wind days and the [number of ]
respiratory ailments I treat,” says Dr Parisi.
The closer her patients live to the steel-
works, the more acute their symptoms.
Several of her patients had spent part of the
weekend at the local hospital and some had
even been admitted, such had been the se-
riousness of their ailments.
Things used to be even worse, before the
factory’s new owners, ArcelorMittal, a mul-
tinational, covered its giant stockpiles of
coal and iron. But, says Luciano Manna, an
environmental campaigner, the wind still
picks up plenty of mineral dust from the
factory’s waste dumps. Commonly known,
by reference to its earlier owners, as the
“ex-ilva”, the steelworks is the size of a
small town or a large suburb. It covers 15
square kilometres (six square miles).
The Italian government has set Febru-
ary 28th as the deadline for an agreement
with ArcelorMittal on the fate of the fac-
tory, one of Europe’s worst environmental
black spots. The firm leased the site in 2018
under an agreement whereby it undertook
to clean up the plant and inherited—from
the government commissioners then man-
aging the place—immunity from prosecu-
tion for environmental crime as it did so.
But last November ArcelorMittal with-
drew from the deal after the maverick Five
Star Movement (m 5 s), which is in a govern-
ing coalition with the centre-left Demo-
cratic Party (pd), succeeded in getting the
immunity lifted. Critics of the firm argue
that it has failed to invest enough in the
clean-up, a charge the company rejects. Dr
Parisi wants the steelworks shut down. She
is not alone: a pledge by the m 5 sto close the
plant helped it win 48% of the votes in Ta-
ranto at the last general election, in 2018.
On one side of Taranto’s Piazza Gesù Di-
vin Lavoratore, the walls between the
shops and bars are clad in a textured stone
that catches whatever dust may be in the
air. Run a finger over the stone and it comesaway red. “Iron oxide”, says Ignazio D’An-
dria, owner of the Mini Bar. “That’s why all
the apartment blocks here are painted red
or pink or some other dark colour—so you
can’t see the mineral dust.” His bar is in
Tamburi, a district built for the steelwork-
ers and their families that begins almost at
the perimeter of the giant complex. Tam-
buri gets the worst of the pollution, but lo-
cals say that plenty of mineral dust finds its
way into the centre of Taranto when the
wind blows across the city and out to sea.
According to a gold dealer who has the
shop next door to the Mini Bar, six of the
children from homes on the piazza suffer
from learning difficulties. That would be
consistent with a study published in 2016,
which found that theiqs of children from
Tamburi were on average 13 points lower
than those of children living 15km away.
But the threats the ex-ilvaposes are not
just to health and the environment.Jobs, too
“It’s a social bomb,” says Giuseppe Rom-
ano, the local secretary of the left-wing
cgil-fiom trades union federation. The
factory employs more than 8,000 people.
Another 4,000 work for its suppliers. If the
ex-ilvawere to close altogether, thousands
of other jobs would be lost as the turnover
of bars, shops and other businesses
shrank. And that in a province where one
worker in six is already unemployed.
Taranto and the province to which it be-longs form part of Puglia, the “heel” of the
Italian “boot”, a region of mixed fortunes in
recent years. It has enjoyed a tourism boom
but has been hit by the spread through its
olive groves of an insect-borne disease, Xy-
lella fastidiosa. Searching for sources of in-
come and employment to replace the steel-
works in the event of its demise, the local
authorities have sponsored plans for the
founding of a university at Taranto, for
more shipbuilding and for an aquarium.
There is talk of encouraging more cruise
liners to berth in its ample port. And in Jan-
uary Taranto became the first city in Italy to
offer houses for sale for a token €1, on con-
dition that the buyers renovate and live in
them. The plan aims to revive the historic
but dilapidated old town on an island be-
tween a lagoon and the Mediterranean.
Mr Romano hopes a way can neverthe-
less be found “to make steel without killing
people”. The question is how much. He cal-
culates that a thousand workers are needed
to produce a million tonnes of steel. The
market in Europe is glutted. Last year the
steelworks produced just 4.3m tonnes
against a capacity of 9m-10m and a govern-
ment target of 8m.
Negotiators are reportedly close to a
deal that would involve ArcelorMittal con-
tinuing to operate the works, possibly in
partnership with the government, on the
understanding that one of the existing
blast furnaces is renovated and a new elec-
tric one built. Such a deal would represent a
defeat for the m 5 s—a party already wracked
by bitter internal divisions that has seen its
popularity collapse since 2018. But it would
reduce the pollution, though not eliminate
it. And it would save thousands of jobs.
Still, it is clear that, if the factory is to
operate at a profit and without becoming
an endless drain on the resources of the
long-suffering Italian taxpayer, thousands
more jobs will have to go.^7TARANTO
The travails of a big but lethal steelworksItaly’s troubled steel factoryDown at heel
Every breath you take