Poor sewage, pollution and cement are the endemic abuse of the Italian sea, that nothing and no one seems able to touch. Persistent pockets of lawlessness at the expense of coastal and marine ecosystem, on which, as every year, Legambiente makes the point in his report Monstrum Sea. The 2010 edition of the dossier was presented in Venice, at the start of the Green Schooner, the historic campaign of the environmental monitoring of marine waters. The 'illegal building increase of 7.6% over the previous year, and pollution from sewage illegal bad treatment and oil pollution much as 45%. The seizures increased by 46.2% rising from 4,049 in 2008 to 5,920 in 2009. Fall rather than the 40% of the offenses established between the coast and the sea, 8,937 offenses in 2009 in front of 14,544 in 2008, a decline driven mainly by the reduction of crime established in the field of fishing (-72.4%) and marine pleasure (- 76.6%).
Always in the lead in the ranking of lawlessness in the regions traditional mafia , where he was found 59% of the total crimes (against 55.5% in 2008). The Campania
with 1,514 offenses is stable in the first place, followed by Apulia with 1,338 offenses, from Sicily
with 1,267 violations and
Calabria with 1,160 offenses. It must be said that the reduction in recorded crime this year is partly the result of work done in the prevention of illegal years by the police, but also partly due to the significant decrease of the checks made by the Harbour, rose from 618,126 in 2008 to 529,700 in 2009, a decrease of 14.3%, due to a reduction of resources allocated to investigative and enforcement activities that adversely affected the checks carried out at sea, certainly more expensive.
"Emergencies in the field showing no signs of resolve and consolidate indeed real pockets of lawlessness increasingly difficult to empty. Faced with an overall reduction of environmental crimes against the mare nostrum, grow this year - said the vice president of Legambiente Sebastiano Venneri - irregularities in the field of cement and those relating to the coast, with a marked preference for valuable areas and smaller islands. New threats also arise: the effects of global warming, nuclear plants, the traffic of oil tankers, vessels of poisons, but especially drilling off-shore oil and the risk. The Mediterranean Sea is a small and closed, where an oil spill would result in incalculable damage. To give an idea, the stain that has invaded the Gulf of Mexico at our latitudes would cover the Adriatic from Trieste to the Gargano.
One of those difficult to empty pockets of lawlessness in the dossier is definitely told the story of
sword killer nets used for catching fish sword and banned by the European Union since 2002 . Every year thousands of specimens of turtles, small dolphins, sperm whales and found death due to suffocation in these networks are non-selective killer that should have already been destroyed thanks to the millions of Euros spent by 'EU fishermen to compensate the owners. But many of the compensation money they have taken the first Europeans and then continued to use illegal gear as if nothing had happened. In Calabria, Campania, Puglia and Sicily have been seized in the last year, a total of more than 133 thousand meters of nets sword and almost 111 000 of bra (a small spadaro legitimate, but often used fraudulently). Marine agencies more involved in police operations were those of Reggio Calabria, Catania, Rome and Naples. As pointed out by investigators in the field working full-time fishermen not improvised, but real criminal organizations often control entire fleets and, increasingly, contaminate the fish markets by imposing their own rules, investing and recycling laundering. The two Italian places notorious for using swords are Bagnara Calabria (RC) and Porticello (Pa). But San Vito lo Capo last year proved to be a kind of "free port", particularly for vessels of Catania, as well as some foreign ports, including that of Bizerte, Tunisia, off the coast of Trapani, one chosen by fleets to offload their catches. Impossible to estimate the collection of this illegal market that provide the investigators, all looks good compared to that office.
From the perspective of the offenses established in the public domain,
Sicily is the region with more on the illegality of unauthorized front with 749 offenses recorded, followed by 702 in Campania, Calabria and Sardinia with 561 to 499 offenses. The illegal brick Italian continues to be a scourge, often the preferred field of action and poorly organized crime faced by a system of local controls ineffective and susceptible to logics of patronage and corrupt. If you widen the north illegally, especially in the south and the center is being built from scratch, from individual houses up to entire resorts and luxury residences. The result of the systematic destruction of the areas of greatest environmental value, as telling the many stories collected in Ocean Monstrum. On the other hand, the inclusion of a new building amnesty for in the budget remains a temptation for the government on which has not yet been said the last word.
cement on the coast seems to prefer places most valuable and the smaller islands. Starting from Ischia, with its 25 000 applications for amnesty, which this year has found itself once again to come to terms with the death toll to bad land management. But Lampedusa, where abuses flourish, also made substantial contributions to public Lipari, where he plans to build two new marinas, the Elbe where you think the building of a few villages. Appeals against the killing in sight, however, on what for years has been renamed The Hill, now that the second section of the Palermo Court of Appeal has blocked the seizure of 14 villas in Pizzo Sella, the subdivision and the mob overlooking the sea Mondello. According to the judges, the owners of 14 homes were purchased "in good faith," and can not be considered complicit in the abuse of cement skeletons dotting the area.
embarrassing numbers for the seventh most industrialized country in the world are also those on non-purified
civil waste: 30% of Italians - of 18 million people - is not served by a sewage treatment plant, while 15% did not have access to a drainage system where to download your reflui.Dati who often travel together with those of unauthorized building of which, usually, illegal discharges are the consequence. With regard to sanitation, only the Lombardy than 90% coverage population, lagging behind Sardinia and Liguria, with 75%. The 15 coastal regions are all below 90%. But the main problems relate to the treatment service. The region in which there is a major deficit is Sicily, where 2.3 million people (54% of the total) discharge their effluent into the sea not purified. Following the Campania, where the service covers only 67% of the population leaving uncovered nearly 2 million citizens, then the Lazio and Tuscany, with approximately 1.4 million (38%) of people uncovered. Because of these numbers, Italy's current EU infringement proceedings for failure to treat wastewater well in 178 Italian towns of medium to large. The five regions in accusation from Europe are Sicily, with 74 municipalities fail to comply, among which several provincial capitals such as Palermo, Catania, Messina, Ragusa, Caltanissetta and Agrigento; Calabria with 32 municipalities including Reggio Calabria, Crotone and Lamezia Terme, the Campania Benevento, Naples, Salerno, Avellino, Caserta and 18 other clusters including Ischia, Liguria with 19 municipalities including Imperia, Genoa and La Spezia, and then 10 municipalities in Puglia, the provinces of Campobasso, Isernia, Trieste, Chieti and so via.Uno of the clearest examples of poor treatment is that of the Royal Lagni, a series of canals that cross a pool of more than 1,000 square kilometers between Naples and the area of \u200b\u200bCaserta, the province which for years has stood at first place for highest percentage of coast where swimming is forbidden, where only 35% of the coastline is considered suitable for bathing. Such a failure to discharge sewage that flow into the Regi Lagni in recent months has led the joint investigation by the Attorney Nola and S. Maria Capua Vetere on purifiers do not work and poisons dumped into the sea, which led to the issuance of several orders of arrest.
Certainly the situation will not improve the entry into force, already this summer, the new legislation on bathing, which aligns Italy to other EU countries but is much milder than it has been with us since 1982 . An alignment downward Therefore, compared to the severity with which it had implemented the previous legislation.
Among the novelties of this year, the threat of new drilling
in Italian sea. The concern is so great and refers to the tragedy that is unfolding over the past two months in the Gulf of Mexico, with the accident of the oil platform of British Petroleum. Many energy companies have in fact advanced search requests, and in some cases permits, in an area of \u200b\u200babout 39mila sq km located in 76 areas, for most of high environmental value and areas considered sensitive because of their fragile ecosystems and precious be protected. Research activities in the sea of \u200b\u200boil are concentrated in the Adriatic Sea, Ionian Sea and in front of the southern and western Sicily: it is awarded 24 exploration permits covering a total area of \u200b\u200bapproximately 11 thousand square kilometers. The places most affected by the activities of oil exploration are the costs between the Marche and Abruzzo (3 exploration permits), especially the stretch of coast between Bari and Brindisi Puglia (2), the Gulf of Taranto and the Strait of Sicily (12). The last permit was issued in chronological order a few days ago at the Shell Italy to start exploration in an area of \u200b\u200b1,356 sq km of sea in front of the Gulf of Taranto. But the multinational energy is already thinking about new research in the Strait of Sicily in search of one of the largest deposits Europe. And the sea areas at risk the arrival of "drill wild and platforms in the coming years could be much higher: from 2008 to now in fact 41 questions were submitted to 23,408 sq km
