Sicily has released 150 million euros, while the government has pledged to find more money and change the rules. The remediation of polluted sites - together with waste management - remains the queen test for a serious environmental policy in the largest region of southern Italy. We are faced with a context of waste, bureaucracy, endless illegal acts that have endangered the health of 6 million Italians. In Palermo, after negotiations with the central government, they managed to allocate money not spent since 1999 to reclamation. Resources that the bureaucracy inserts in the "special accounting" and that in order to be put into circulation have even required a regulation in the Milleproroghe. We are so good at complicating things that the final word is not seen even when emergencies are overcome by goodwill. Indeed, in Sicily the 150 million will not be expendable before next June.
And the government of sustainable change? The Undersecretary for the Environment, Roberto Morassut, says that the accelerator has been stepped on and that his Ministry will create a specific directorate for reclamation. In Italy there are 41 Sites of National Interest (SIN) for a total of 161.250 hectares of land and sea areas. Another 13.000 sites have been classified as potentially contaminated and are of territorial jurisdiction. But the list is partial. The latest discovery was made yesterday in Pomigliano D'Arco, with the seizure of an illegal area of 35 square meters. In the interesting volume "Remediation of polluted sites “, edited by the Italian Society of Environmental Geology, you will find the most effective technical-scientific analyzes and approaches to remedy this multi-year disaster. The commitment to get out of it must be national, with specific economic resources and the use of innovative technologies. Our monograph – he writes in the preface the researcher Silvia Paparella - it is precisely with respect to the effort that is being made at a national level, not always in a linear way, towards innovative characterization and remediation technologies.
The commitments of the Conte bis are in the environmental link to the Budget. Without hitches and controversies within the majority, clear rules on risk parameters, on the single form for all reclamation projects, on the responsibilities between center and periphery should be launched once and for all. Roberto Morassut is confident in the possibility of returning the territory to the communities quickly. However, "we have to act on the existing legislation by intervening on the weaknesses of the system in force today", he said. For fifteen years, the reclamations were managed on the basis of a Consolidated Text of 318 articles, a mountain of annexes and infinite modifications. The classic Italian case of law-monstre so in every region landfills have grown without anyone seeing anything, apart from citizens' committees. We need a restyling of the technical regulations, building on the experience gained over the years: this is the commitment of the Pd exponent. The experience, in fact, that put 6 million people at risk.
