Piedmont to take care of ‘orphaned’ polluted sites

Abandoned spaces can turn out to be more than just an aesthetic eyesore

The regional government of Piedmont (Italy) reported last week that it has concluded an agreement with the country’s Ministry for Ecological Transition to take care of abandoned, and potentially environmentally polluting sites. This will result in the disbursement of 7 million euros from the PNRR (Italy’s National Recovery Plan) that will go towards remediating the problem of hazardous spaces for which no responsible party or owner can be identified.

This is meant to take concrete action rather than hide behind arguments of legal inefficiency, which ultimately do nothing to solve the problem.

The environment can’t wait

Now that the funding is here, it will be possible to carry out the reclamation and environmental restoration of the first 16 so-called "orphan" sites in the region of Piedmont. These are places that are potentially polluted and for which either it was not possible to identify those responsible or, if identified, they did not proceed to start or end the planned interventions to end pollution or clean it up.

There was a survey carried out in recent months by the regional technical sectors and the subsequent identification of those sites that meet the ‘orphan’ criteria. Priority was given to the highest risk indices, and a list was drawn up that includes 6 sites in the province of Turin, 3 in the province of Alessandria, 3 in the province of Cuneo, 3 in the province of Novara and 1 in Vercelli.

“With these first (financial) resources we will be able to reclaim sites that have been abandoned for a long time,” commented the President of Piedmont Alberto Cirio and the regional councillor for the environment Matteo Marnati, adding: “We bring important areas back to life, making them available to citizens, businesses and municipalities. A true regeneration of the soil. In the meantime, we have made other requests in the PNRR to reclaim other sites in Piedmont.”