VIDEO| At the ANCE conference on reclamation:harmonize regulations, simplify and certain times

Proceeding with reclamation means returning to having areas available for the PNRR works and for the creation of renewable capacity

ROME - Remediation is a necessity for various reasons:remediation of polluted areas to bring natural matrices back to normal, protect the health of communities, comply with European infringements which cost the community heavy fines, recover precious territory given the limited availability of land and Italy's heavy consumption of it. Proceeding with reclamation means returning to having areas available for the PNRR works and for the creation of renewable capacity, two very present needs given the deadlines of the first and the binding objectives that concern the second, for example with regards to the PNIEC targets.In short, there is a lot to do, but the complexity of the regulations, which are often conflicting or redundant, causes intolerable delays for companies that need certain deadlines.

Over the last 20 years, national legislation has progressively evolved, with the aim of facilitating this opportunity, even if there are still various legal, procedural and technical aspects to be clarified and explored.Something is therefore moving, for example with the 'Interferences' decree 45/2023 of the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security which resolves some interferences, in fact, in the legislation concerning the works that can be carried out in the course of reclamation in Sites of national interest.Possible works being reclaimed thanks to article 242 ter of Legislative Decree 152/2006, Consolidated Law on the Environment, which establishes how the projects of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan can be implemented in the sites subject to remediation, including sites of national interest .

The presence of productive activities in operation and the possibility of carrying them out construction and maintenance works in short, at sites with ongoing reclamation interventions, it often constitutes the key to guaranteeing the sustainability of the reclamation interventions themselves and the consequent opportunity to guarantee the redevelopment of many abandoned areas present in the area.

The theme was at the center of the conference 'Interventions and works on the sites subject to remediation:regulatory and technical aspects' today at the headquarters of the National Association of Building Contractors - ANCE.

“For the business world, the issue of reclamation represents a business and an opportunity, a substantially inexhaustible business, because the Italian territory has been extremely exploited in the post-industrial decades, therefore one of the major bets on regeneration is parallel to the use of brownfield, the urbanized sites that have lost their industrial function and which must find a renewed hypothesis of rebirth through urban planning regulations", explains Marco Dettori, ANCE vice-president for the Ecological Transition.

“The theme of reclamation fits into all this, an activity of public interest, given that generally companies manage to fix situations polluted by others - Dettori continues - Making the remediation intervention fluid, simple, appropriate from the point of view of investment compatibility, and therefore of time, is an absolutely primary objective that is with a view to simplifying the administrative process, its management, the parallelism between the administrative part and the industrial part which today have an extreme gap".

Construction is therefore also the protagonist of the transition in this case: not only in the energy efficiency of buildings, in urban regeneration and in green infrastructure works, but also in the implementation of reclamation and the use of recovered areas.“There is no activity that can somehow trace ecological transition objectives that does not pass through the construction sector,” explains the ANCE vice president for the Ecological Transition.

“The key role of the construction sector must be made its own, the consolidated opinion must be created that only through this type of activity can objectives be effectively achieved, in the construction of new plants, in the management of land recovery, in the construction of plants for the waste treatment, in cogeneration, trigeneration, waste-to-energy - concludes Dettori - everything that in some way concerns the production of alternative energy inevitably passes through the construction sector which must commit to taking on this private role within the activities that concern this specific topicto".