A 10 square meter concrete wall with side steps onto the state beach, a 52 square meter terrace paved with concrete, a tunnel created in an area already seized and used as a compartment for a cold room. Reports of building abuses a few steps from the sea, in this case that of Maronti, on the island of Ischia, where yesterday the police sealed a well-known restaurant. One episode among the many that occur every year along the coasts of Campania, which are still besieged by concrete.
The report tells it well Mare Monstrum by Legambiente – preview of the dossier on the illegal cement cycle which will be made known on 5 September, anniversary of the murder of the fisherman mayor Angelo Vassallo – which was presented yesterday and which refers to 2023. An investigation that takes into account seizures and complaints and the results of which may be influenced by the possible greater activism of prosecutors and law enforcement agencies in one or the other region, which gives Campania the black jersey in Italy. «In 2023 – informs Legambiente – in the region there were 1,531 (+21% compared to 2022) crimes linked to illegal cement along the coasts ascertained by the police and the port authorities. 14.9% of the national total, with 1,710 people reported (+18.6%) and 332 criminal seizures (+18%)”. Puglia (1,442 crimes, 14.1% of the national total), Sicily (1,180 crimes, 11.5%) and Calabria (1,046 crimes, 10.2% of the total) follow in the coastal assault ranking.
In the coastal centers of Campania, where the value per square meter of apartments is much higher than in the hinterland, the illegal building activity subject to municipal demolition orders is six times higher than that of the rest of the territory. Few were carried out, however. «We sent questionnaires to the municipal administrations – stated Enrico Fontana, the curator of Mare Monstrum who directs Legambiente’s Observatory on Legality – to obtain data on the ordinances completed between 2004 and 2022. In Campania, 110 municipalities responded out of 550. It emerges that 3,107 out of 23,635 ordinances were executed. 13.1%”.
4 Municipalities of Capri and Ischia also provided data to Legambiente. On the green island, 175 demolition orders out of 1274 were carried out. Numbers – it should be specified – net of the demolitions that derive from final convictions and which are managed by the Prosecutor’s Office, which in recent years has faced many difficulties, including economic , in Campania they are trying to follow up on the reduction of illegal cement.
Furthermore, illegal construction in Campania as elsewhere is certainly not a phenomenon that belongs to the past and is about to disappear. «In 2022 – recalls Fontana – in the report on fair and sustainable well-being (Bes), Istat noted that for the first time since 2004 the phenomenon in Italy had increased by 9.1%. He also wrote that in the south out of 100 houses built, 40 are built illegally.” The announcements of amnesties, small and large amnesties that return periodically only make the situation worse. «The latest example – says the director of Legambiente’s Legality Observatory – is the Save Casa decree of the Meloni government. It provides that amnesty requests are approved if the Municipalities do not respond within 45 days. We wonder which municipal administration in Italy today is capable of respecting these deadlines.”
