14 DAY TRIAL // Coal plants are no stranger to bad publicity, chiefly because, as shown by several studies, their working agenda more often than not goes hand in hand with environmental pollution. Hence, it has many times been argued that they represent a threat to public health.
Still, it is not all that often that one hears about how a coal plant was ordered to shut down by a judge who found it responsible for over 400 deaths related to exposure to air pollution and who saw fit to punish it accordingly.
News from Italy says that, this past Tuesday, local police in Savona saw to it that a coal-fired power plant dubbed Vado Ligure pulled the plug on its two units. According to media reports, the police forced the facility to shut down after being ordered by a judge to take control of it. Huffington Post details that the shutting down of the coal plant follows a lawsuit filed against the facility and its owner, a company named Tirreno Power, which happens to be one of Italy's largest producers of electricity.
Thus, it was during this lawsuit that Francantonio Granero, Savona's chief prosecutor, made a case of how emissions stemming from Vado Ligure caused a total of 442 premature deaths between the years 2000 and 2007.
During the same time frame, pollution originating from the plant caused over 2,000 people to develop various heart and lung diseases, Francantonio Granero further argued in front of the judge.
According to Smog Blog, Vado Ligure need also be blamed for the fact that, between the years 2005 and 2012, as many as 450 children living in the region developed asthma and other respiratory ailments, and had to be hospitalized.
Hence, it would appear that, in a recent interview with the press, Francantonio Granero explained that what he hoped that Tirreno Power would be found guilty of was “causing an environmental disaster and manslaughter.”
By the looks of it, Judge Fiorenza Giorgi decided to side with prosecutors and ordered Tirreno Power to shut down its two 330-Megawatt coal-fired units on the grounds that the company was guilty of “negligent behavior.”
Not complying with emissions regulations, and providing “unreliable” information concerning its emissions were two other issues that the judge said Tirreno Power had to be held accountable for.
For the time being, it is unclear whether or not the electricity company will be allowed to reopen its Vado Ligure coal-fired plant sometime in the future, provided that better emissions control measures are implemented, of course.