A turning point in the environmental policies of the territory

The environmental aggression of municipal territory began many years ago and depended on choices institutional and criminal factors.

The first ones started over the years seventies with the decision to build one of the largest plants in purification of Europe (which was supposed to serve over 3.5 million inhabitants equivalent) in the border area between Giugliano and Pozzuoli (Cuma), whose bad management has compromised the bathability of the sea waters; in the same years, furthermore, decisions were made that concerned the Regi Lagni and the river Volturno which have also contributed to polluting the northern coast, at the borders with Castel Volturno, and Lake Patria.

Then, in the eighties and ninety, the waste issue was added. In fact, the territory of Giugliano, even before the now well-known emergency story began waste in Campania, had already been identified as a "privileged" place for dumping waste from all over Italy in landfill.

Alongside such type choices institutional, which had already started an intense depletion of resources natural and tourist, organized crime, taking advantage of the gradual abandonment of the territory, the absence of environmental control and, above all, of the waste emergency that has lasted for over a decade, has taken the territory transforming it into the destination for numerous illegal trafficking of waste coming from, as witnessed by various judicial investigations, including from the North of Country.

In addition to these circumstances, we also remember that the city of Giugliano suffered an intense  phenomenon of illegal construction has begun in the 1970s, which worsened the environmental situation with the presence of numerous unauthorized discharges and with the increase in the demographic load which has led to the growth of vehicular traffic and consequent pollution atmospheric; the latter has also worsened, in recent years, by the continuations fires of ordinary and special waste in many areas of the territory.

This situation, the effects of which have been under the eyes of all citizens for several years, it is the one that is there we found ourselves having to face from the beginning of our action administrative.

The complexity of the topic and the still strong presence of pollution sources (malfunction of regional purifiers and waste emergency), reveal a critical state considerable environmental impact that can only be addressed by making use of highly specialized technical experience and huge economic resources for the remediation of contaminated sites, in the knowledge that every process restoring the state of places cannot happen overnight, but requires several years of careful work. 

What could we do, then, in a such an environmental emergency framework?

We have started a series of initiatives. First of all we set up a dedicated municipal office exclusively for the protection and reclamation of the territory by providing it with a small group of environmental police; we have also entrusted the University has the task of describing the various critical issues in detail of the environmental matrices of water, air and soil, also trying to outline where possible, the priorities for intervention.

Again, intercepting resources Europeans, were carried out, for the first time,  a series of preliminary investigations for ascertain the pollution of the land and groundwater affected by the landfills public in the area. On these sites, making use of additional funds communities, the remediation process was also started with the subsequent plans of characterization.

Furthermore, from day one, the Administration opposed it, first with legal actions, then with others forms of opposition, to any further use of the territory to make facing the waste emergency in Campania. To this end, a task force of lawyers with the task of reporting all forms of crime environment and to request compensation for the damage suffered by citizens also acting as a civil party in all the processes already initiated by judiciary.

We have set up checks all potentially polluted sites through the activation of an agreement with the Regional Environmental Protection Agency (ARPA) and requested its restoration of the state of the places to the Extraordinary Commissioner for Reclamation.

We also requested more times, the intervention of the Ministry of the Environment and Land Protection for enforce the law on Sites of National Interest (SIN) and carry out checks in areas where there was suspicion of the presence of special waste e toxic.

Furthermore, for over a year we monitor the quality of the water to guarantee its drinkability in every area of the municipal territory.

We can say that, to date, the the overall picture of the environmental situation of Giugliano is much clearer and that, after years of neglect, the level of attention to the risk of pollution of environmental matrices is much higher.

Next to all this, we believe marks a turning point in the environmental policies of the territory, welcoming the requests from numerous citizens and associations who have been asking for several years certain data on the increase in tumor pathologies in the Giugliano area, it was a specific budget chapter has been prepared for the establishment of an Observatory on Mortality and Morbidity (WMO).

It is known to everyone by now that there they are studies by healthcare and university organizations that identify the so-called “triangle of death” – the area north of Naples most affected from the waste emergency – various anomalies in the spatial distribution of some pathologies.

Therefore last year, together at the COMEF cooperative of general practitioners, we have established the WMO, in order to be able to monitor any anomalies over time and collaborate with all higher-level institutions, providing them with municipal-scale data invaluable for studying the relationship between environmental degradation and pathologies human.

The collaboration with COMEF has also led to the creation of a proprietary environmental GIS of the Administration, where the potentially polluted sites have been inserted and the precise location of deaths and tumor pathologies; the GIS represents an essential tool for studying the correlations between pollution, mortality and morbidity in the area. Such a job he found the interest of many other municipal administrations and, above all, we believe has contributed to accelerating similar paths by the institutions competent in matters of health control and prevention on a regional scale.

We consider this initiative to be one important choice, both because it responds to a widespread need to do clarity on the topic of safeguarding human health, avoiding alarmism resulting from the absence of a scientific approach to the problem, and because marks the Administration's desire to equip itself with an organization, the WMO, which sees health workers engaged in closer contact with citizens (i family doctors) who can alert or reassure you better than others population.

Finally, we believe that the Mortality and Morbidity Observatory represents a fundamental tool to make the precautionary principle, sanctioned by the European Union, the truth engine of the protection of the territory of the Giugliano area.

(speech at the COMEF conference, A turning point in the environmental policies of the territory.

The Councilor for Land Reclamation                                                              The Mayor

eng. Armando Di Nardo                                                                   arch. Francesco Taglialatela