Over 7.6 million euros are coming to the coffers of municipalities that host landfill facilities. This is the sum resulting from the distribution that AGER, the Regional Territorial Agency for Waste Management Service, approved to be used on the eco-tax quota.
“Another important measure to provide municipalities with significant additional resources to be used for investments in the field of sustainable territorial development. This is approximately 7.6 million euros which are added to the 7.2 million already distributed with a resolution of the Regional Council less than a month later. The distribution of the sums implemented by Ager – comments the Councillor for the Environment of the Puglia Region, Serena Triggiani – aims, in particular, to support, also with a view to solidarity between neighbouring territories that deliver waste, those municipalities that are home to landfills and incineration plants without energy recovery. They will thus be able to invest in interventions aimed at environmental protection and improvement, such as the development of environmental control and monitoring systems and integrated management of urban waste”.
“The Ager measure – the councilor recalls – follows, as already mentioned, another significant allocation of resources approved by the Regional Council and equal to 7.2 million euros from the ecotax fund, to support virtuous Municipalities that achieved a result of more than 65% for separate waste collection in 2023. These are resources included in the Economic and Financial Plans (PEF) of the Municipalities and aimed at containing the effects on the TARI (after the well-known ruling of the Council of State that annulled the tariffs envisaged by ARERA and implemented by the Regions which had caused a significant increase in the charges for the Municipal Administrations and citizens for 2022 and 2023).
All this represents – concludes Councillor Triggiani – an unprecedented injection of resources for the municipalities, which will be able to develop land protection systems for interventions to protect the environment in the territories of the municipalities involved.. The goal is, therefore, to offer all the necessary tools to ensure effective and efficient waste management, significantly reducing the quantities to be taken to landfill, and to support improvement and sustainable interventions in the medium to long term that are absolutely necessary and can no longer be postponed”.
For the director of AGER Puglia, Angel Pansini: “This measure, which has given substance to the regulatory provisions established by the Puglia Region, has first and foremost the purpose of attributing to the territories that have hosted these plants a tangible recognition for the contribution that these Municipalities give to the whole of Puglia. In this way, it is believed to recognize the hardship experienced by the communities that host this type of plant and to offer them a compromise that supports the implementation of initiatives to protect the territory and develop environmental issues. And this recognition benefits not only the Municipalities that host these plants but also the neighboring Municipalities, realizing a vision of real solidarity between territories and communities. The overall sum that has been distributed is just over 7.6 million euros and will be distributed among the 39 Municipalities involved”.
Attached is the breakdown of the ecotax quota allocated to municipalities with landfill facilities and neighboring municipalities.
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