Pollution in Venafro, the Region’s moves: limitations and investments

After 35 exceedances, or in any case after a series of continuous exceedances lasting for example a week, restrictive measures will be activated to bring the values ​​below the alarm threshold. A tender will soon be published with incentives to replace boilers that still use fossil fuels and focus on photovoltaics. A cycle path will be built and trees will be planted to increase green spaces. From an infrastructural point of view, the objective remains to completely free Venafro of vehicular traffic heading towards Naples or Rome.
With the illustration of the details of the new regional plan for air quality, i.e. the addendum to Priamo which became necessary after the “Mothers for Health” association won the appeal to the TAR complaining about the lack of measures concrete for the Piana in the original document, the leaders of Palazzo Vitale yesterday put on the table the list of investments already started or in the pipeline to mitigate the effects of pollution in Venafro.
«We worked with the technical structure to make the Priamo suitable for the needs, in particular, of the Venafro area. We must ensure – highlighted the Councilor for the Environment Andrea Di Lucente – that PM10 exceedances are not as numerous as in this period, consider that to date we already have 25. The plan provides that after the 35th exceedance or after a series of continuous overruns, for about a week, limitations must necessarily be adopted, be they limitations on traffic, on the time of use of domestic heating… But the main thing is the review by the Hague of the two main companies in the area which they have interesting emissions into the atmosphere.” Even if, added the vice-president of the council, «the finger is always pointed at the two large industries, Herambiente and Colacem, which however are monitored 24 hours a day. However, there are other things that are not monitored, mainly traffic, boilers of condominiums and homes”.
The monitoring network is the other field of intervention, financed in part with FSC funds (6 million are allocated in the development and cohesion agreement signed with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on 25 March). New control units will be purchased, Di Lucente said. Then there is room for significant reforestation and “a tender for the replacement of biomass boilers”.
The underlying objective was summarized by governor Francesco Roberti. «We must implement a massive intervention of funding and essential measures to improve air quality. We must invest resources to prevent vehicular traffic from passing through Venafro. We have made the funds available to create cycle paths, therefore to have sustainable mobility, for the planting of trees and to create a forest that can contribute to the reduction of particulate matter.” Roberti also underlined the importance of dedicating “great attention to monitoring in the most delicate areas, i.e. the industrial ones, and not least the provision of incentives for the replacement of boilers that still use fossil fuels”.
Also at the press conference was the vice-president of the Regional Council Stefania Passarelli, former mayor of Pozzilli and “real impetus”, to use Roberti’s definition, for the regional government’s action on the pollution front in the Plain. Passarelli has collected and still collects the concerns of the population of the area, the anguish for the many young lives destroyed by cancer. While the data from the tumor registry is consolidated (the incidence data collected so far only go up to 2017), Passarelli highlighted, it is important to take concrete action to improve the environmental situation. Last year, she then concluded, «I ran for the regional elections because there was a mayor leading the coalition (Roberti, ed.). I did it because we mayors know what the problems are, we talk to people and we know our territories well. I am very happy to have taken this step, to stand alongside President Roberti, who at the first opportunity, when the funds were available, did not doubt in the slightest the need to pay attention to the Venafro Plain. I fully agree with all the initiatives he is putting in place. We hope to do it because it is really necessary.”
ritai

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