The Municipality believes it is the competence of the Coutenza channels The company responds by citing a sentence of the TAR of 2009
IVREA. «Cold as a pain, dolcenera without heart», the water returned as early as the afternoon of Monday 22 to cover the open landfill along the Ivrea canal. Thus tires, cash registers, safes, car parts, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, bicycles and video poker, are once again covered by the black mirror reminiscent of that of water sung by Fabrizio De Andrè, who thus painted the 1970 flood. submerged that enter the ecosystem that feeds the fields between San Giovanni and Torre Balfredo and kilometers and kilometers of waterways, straight down to the rice fields of Vercelli, when it flows into the Sesia.
Those who work and live on the watercourse are not surprised, but still manage to be indignant. “It has always been like this and I have never seen anyone who has come to clean up,” explains Davide Borello, with a farm in via dei Cappuccini. «We must first of all say that it is an indecent thing – adds our colleague Luca Boglino -, then we must add that we farmers pay the consortium to have that water. And I don’t think it’s good for the citizens. Everyone has always known that there is anything in the canal and every time there is a shoal, the waste emerges, but no one takes it away ». Arpa Piemonte, contacted, makes it known that it has never carried out water analyzes. On the other hand, it is a private trait. Even a simple citizen can, however, report a potential environmental emergency to the body, which it then verifies.
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However, whoever has the task of removing that waste is the object of the dispute. On the one hand, the commissioner with responsibility for environmental sustainability and agriculture Giuliano Balzola recalls that it is “a private channel, managed by Coutenza Canali Cavour”. According to the Municipality, therefore, it would be up to the company to remove the waste to which it wrote last week, copying the ARPA in a pec, to ask for an account of the situation. Strengthened by article 250 of the Environmental Code which provides that, only if those responsible for the pollution “are not identifiable (as in this case, ed) and neither the owner of the site (Coutenza,ed) nor other interested parties “, the administration should intervene.
The surveyor Luca Simonetto, who deals with Ovest Sesia, which therefore includes the Ivrea canal, is not of the same opinion. «It is a photocopy – he explains – of what happens on all the waterways in Italy. We have no financial coverage to carry out an intervention of this type, above all because from Ivrea to Vercelli there are kilometers of waste. In some cases we have agreements with the municipalities, we take care of the drainage of the riverbed, but then they are the ones who deliver the waste to landfills. In reality, we do a reclamation activity that is not recognized by anyone, every year we dispose of hundreds of thousands of kilos of waste in our hydroelectric plants ».
In addition, Coutenza responded to the request of the Municipality citing some sentences of the TAR, which prove it right. That of 27 July 2009 issued against the ordinance of the Municipality of Cigliano, which required the removal and disposal of waste. But the judges of the second Turin civil section have established that the removal is the responsibility of the private individual “if the violation of the prohibitions of the law derives from a psychological state of willful misconduct or fault”.
Collaboration, however, is not impossible and is required by the Code. In Legambiente’s memory, it seems that there would have been a precedent. In fact, fifteen years ago the Municipality of Ivrea signed an agreement with the Coutenza Cavour company for the removal and disposal of waste from the canal bed and the Pianezza canal. The company would have deposited the garbage at the edge of the watercourse and the municipality would have taken charge, with SCS to take them to the landfill. «Incivility is always lurking – comments Nevio Perna, historical exponent of the Ivrea environmental movement – but today there are all the objective conditions to make a garrison of the area and implement forms of control. We should re-propose a form of agreement similar to the one that was made 15 years ago. Why can’t something like this be put back on its feet today? ». –
(Vanessa Vidano collaborated)