Sarno River and Regi Lagni, the balance of the Carabinieri Forestali

Checks, seizures and reports for environmental pollution in a year of checks among the companies along the Sarno River and the Regi Lagni.

For about a year now, and precisely since the end of the first "lockdown", the Carabinieri of the Forestry, Environmental and Agri-food Units Command have undertaken, without interruption, a complex and incessant campaign of controls, also with the aid of drones, aimed at repressing phenomena of waste abandonment as well as illegal dumping by companies operating in the areas of the Sarno River Basin, which crosses the provinces of Avellino, Salerno and Naples and the Regi Lagni, which instead cross the provinces of Naples and Caserta.

CARABINIERI CHECKS

The activity, in both cases, began with a preliminary and detailed census of the main productive activities, divided by typology, present in the territories crossed by the watercourses under consideration.
In a later stage, the Carabinieri of the Environmental Protection Group of Naples with the employees of the Ecological Operational Nuclei of Naples, Salerno and Caserta and of the Carabinieri Forestali Groups of Naples, Avellino, Caserta and Salerno have continued their incessant control activity, carrying out numerous checks at industrial plants, among the most varied production sectors, with numerous seizures of entire companies, responsible for the illegal disposal of waste and unauthorized discharges of industrial waste water, making use of the technical collaboration of ARPAC personnel and under the synergic coordination of the Public Prosecutor's Offices of Avellino, Nocera Inferiore and Torre Annunziata as regards the Sarno river, and of the Public Prosecutor's Offices of Naples North, Santa Maria Capua and Nola for the territories crossed by the Regi Lagni. It is therefore a coordinated and joint effort of all the Institutions, aimed at ascertaining and putting a stop to the causes of pollution of the water basins among the most important in the Campania Region.

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Overall, over the last year, since the end of the "lockdown", the Carabinieri of the aforementioned departments have:

a. in the Sarno river basin area (provinces of Naples, Salerno and Avellino):

– 313 production activities checked;

– 172 people reported;

– 41 illegal dumps identified;

– 47 seizures were carried out between companies and/or parts of them and waste storage areas;

– 63 administrative sanctions were imposed, for an amount equal to approximately 242.000 Euro.

b. in the area of ​​the Regi Lagni basin (provinces of Caserta and Naples):

– 105 production activities checked;

– 46 people reported;

– carried out 19 seizures of companies and/or parts of them, waste storage areas and illegal dumps;

– 31 administrative sanctions were imposed, for an amount equal to approximately 153.000 Euro.

In many circumstances, inside collection tanks, by-passes have even been identified, used to dispose of runoff water from yards into surface water bodies, omitting the passage through purifiers, where they exist, for the necessary preventive treatment.
Furthermore, always in the context of the controls to protect the health of the Sarno River, the Carabinieri of the NOE of Naples and the NOE of Salerno have carried out, on behalf of the interested Public Prosecutors, a series of checks at the offices of numerous Municipalities whose territories are crossed by the aforementioned watercourse. This in-depth investigation arises from the examination of the results of the analysis of water samples from the Sarno River, carried out by ARPA Campania, from which very high concentration values ​​of the bacteriological parameter of Escherichia Coli emerged, especially near the mouth of the river.
The investigations carried out so far, both with reference to the Sarno river and to the Regi Lagni basin, have confirmed that the causes of pollution of the watercourses can be traced back to:

– illegal discharges of industrial wastewater by companies taking advantage of adverse weather conditions;

– discharges of rainwater runoff, coming from industrial activity yards in general;

– discharge of wastewater from the sewerage network of numerous municipalities that do not yet have complete sewerage networks and/or, even if they do have them, the networks are not connected to existing purification plants.

Control activities are still ongoing and will continue in the future, with the aim of avoiding the repetition of illicit behavior by private and/or public entities, with the hope of an ever-increasing environmental awareness by all citizens, in the primary interest of safeguarding public health and the environment.