Massa-Carrara After years of announcements, withdrawal of funds already allocated, false starts and postponements, it seems a decisive step forward has been taken for the start of the reclamation of the Apuan Sin/Sir, whose lands and aquifers are still heavily poisoned by 50 years of chemical industry.
Last Friday, in the last session of the commission specially appointed by Sogesid Spa, a company of the Ministry of the Environment and implementer of the works necessary for the environmental recovery of our territory, the tender procedure for the unitary reclamation interventions of the Sin/Sir aquifer of Massa-Carrara. In the next few days, therefore, there will be the award to the company that won the contract, for a tender base of 9 million and 700 thousand euros.
The timetable has also been defined, which includes 120 days for the executive planning and 16 months for the correct execution of the works. Therefore, considering the times for the delivery procedures of the works, the construction sites will be operational from next November. The work will be financed by the Region which, after the revocation of 21 million due to the expiry of the deadline previously set for the contract for the works, which occurred on 31 December 2022, has allocated another 12 new million for the intervention on the aquifer. The definitive project presented by Sogesid envisages a single mega groundwater treatment plant, to be built in the area of the Lavello 2 purifier, former Cersam, owned by the Municipality of Massa and managed by Gaia, to which the water from the 4 areas will arrive more polluted than Sin/Sir, downstream of which the same number of hydraulic barriers will arise. In particular, the reactivation and integration of the 12 barrier wells of the former Ferroleghe (deactivated since 2011) are planned, with 5 further wells, the construction of another 8 wells in the former Rumianca/Enichem, the hydraulic isolation of lot 1 of the former Italiana Coke, through 5 new wells and the construction of 3 barrier lines in the former Farmoplant, for a total of 17 new wells, to integrate the 6 managed by Edison Spa (formerly Montedison).
The hydraulic barriers will extract a maximum of 5,592 cubic meters of water per day, which, via pipes, will be conveyed to Sink 2, to be purified in the new system, equipped with different modules. A filter will eliminate the chromium VI coming from the former Ferroleghe, while another, called “Eni.Farmo.Coke” and divided into two lines, will deal with the water arriving from the remaining three areas. The water, once “cleaned”, will be discharged into the Lavello ditch. «For some time – comments Clara Gonnelli of the Coordination of Committees and Associations for the purification, reclamation and re-publicisation of the water service – we have been urging the bodies in charge to speed up reclamation and finally some news has arrived which gives us hope, even if we will continue to monitor the situation, so that no more time is wasted, in the belief that this is the most important battle for our territory. However, we are very skeptical about the fact that with a tender base of not even 10 million it will be possible to correctly carry out a complex reclamation such as that of the Apuan aquifer, for which, initially, a figure higher than 25 million was foreseen”.
David Chiappuella
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
