Article detail – Veneto Region
(AVN) Venice 19 November 2022
“Password: safety and health. The Veneto Region continues to do its utmost, with its work, to safeguard the territory and, consequently, for the health of its citizens. In fact, when an environment is healthy, the people who live there are also better off. For the Region, the fight against pollution is a priority, with an eye to the Venice Lagoon and the surrounding areas, considered a problem of important national interest. A fight that is guaranteed through prevention and thanks to targeted and effective interventions. We are also giving concrete proof of this today with the new deliberated measure”.
These are the words that the Regional Councilor for economic development with responsibility for the Special Law for Venice, Roberto Marcato, expresses in reference to the Dgr approved by the Regional Council to begin an important reclamation operation at the end of the former landfill in via Teramo, in the municipality of Mira, in the Venetian area. The resolution also identifies the Government Commissioner for the implementation of the necessary interventions on illegal landfills present on the national territory, the only beneficiary of the residual portion of the regional funding of over 900 thousand euros which will be used for the reclamation of the Mire landfill.
“With the Provision in question – Marcato highlighted – the Region actively contributes to the environmental remediation of a polluted area foreseen by the population for almost a quarter of a century, in full collaboration with the Government Commissioner General Giuseppe Vadalà, whom I thank, still appreciating once the availability and professionalism shown together with his team”.
The story begins in 1998, when in via Teramo, in Borbiago, it was discovered that, in the 1960s and 1970s, more than 7,000 toxic-harmful kegs from Porto Marghera had been secretly buried. A year later, a parliamentary commission of inquiry dealt with the matter, but the definitive reclamation of the area has not yet been completed.
The Veneto Region already took action in 1999, identifying a specific loan from the funds of the Special Law for Venice, equal to approximately 1.1 million euros in favor of the Municipality of Mira, in order to deal with the environmental emergency situation created in that area, for the execution of reclamation and environmental restoration of the site in question.
The complex story continues with the inclusion of the area in the list of about 200 landfills subject to a community infringement procedure, which led, in 2007, to a first sentence of condemnation against Italy by the European Court of Justice, for non-compliance with obligations relating to waste management. This was followed by a second sentence, which in 2014 definitively condemned the Italian State to pay a flat-rate fine of around 40 million euros and an initial six-monthly penalty of over 42 million euros, from which to deduct 400 thousand euros for each landfill , containing hazardous waste, brought into compliance, and 200 thousand euros for each regularized landfill containing non-hazardous waste, to be paid until the sentence is fully enforced.
In order to deal structurally with the complexity of solving the aforementioned Community infringement procedure, the Council of Ministers decided to appoint, starting from 2017, Gen. B. CC. Giuseppe Vadalà, as Extraordinary Commissioner (now Sole Commissioner) with the task of carrying out all the interventions necessary for adapting illegal landfills to the current legislation, including also the former landfill in via Teramo.
Following this appointment, the Regional Council requested this provision, relating to the change of the beneficiary subject for the environmental redevelopment intervention on the area, simultaneously assigning to Commissioner Vadalà the residual portion of the regional funding, pursuant to the Special Law for Venice, equal at 922,542.78 euros