Italy's cabinet signs clean-up protocol for Naples' former steel site

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's cabinet on Tuesday launched vigilance procedures on the environmental clean-up of a huge former steel site at Bagnoli in Naples.

Rules were included in a protocol the cabinet formally signed with the National Anti-Corruption Authority (ANAC), a preliminary step in order to begin cleaning works at the former industrial area in the Southern Italy's city later this year.

"Bagnoli will be cleaned up, and be healthy again," Renzi told a press conference after the signing ceremony.

"We owe it to the women and men of Naples," Renzi said.

Bagnoli was Italy's largest steel plant. It was definitely closed in the mid-1990s, and its facilities phased out.

Without a proper cleanup and redevelopment project truly implemented in decades, however, the whole neighborhood still presents heavy environmental problems and public health risks.

ANAC will have full supervision over all of the procedures of work assignment and over their implementation, as it happened for Milan Expo 2015, officials said on Tuesday.

"We will use the same rules and the same special working team of Milan Expo 2015, which includes the Guardia di Finanza (Italy's finance police) force," ANAC chief and former Supreme Court magistrate Raffaele Cantone told the press conference.

"We did it because this system worked efficiently in the case of Expo 2015, and, thanks to the role of the finance police associated with ANAC officers, it will allow us overall control against all attempts of infiltration," he added.

Cantone, who previously worked as a prosecutor against Naples' organized crime, acknowledged the specific risks such a massive project might face in a region with a heavy presence of the mafia.

"It is a greater challenge compared to Expo, because the Bagnoli situation is much more complex. Yet, we believe in it," he said.

The Italian cabinet pledged 272 million euros (303.03 million U.S. dollars) for the project.

In April, Renzi chaired a steering committee in Naples that unveiled the timing and schedule of the environmental clean-up and revamp of the site.

"The reclamation of Bagnoli will require some 36 months, and will end in 2019," the prime minister explained at the time.

Clean-up works would begin later in 2016, followed by a recovery phase in January 2017 and a final infrastructural phase starting at the end of 2017, according to the plan.

"Bagnoli has been Italy's biggest disaster in the last 20 years, and will now become the largest redevelopment project in Europe," Renzi said on Tuesday.

The issue has recently become particularly sensitive for Italy.

Earlier in May, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg put the Italian State under trial for allegedly failing to protect the citizens' health in the southern city of Taranto from pollutant emissions of ILVA, another giant steel plant.

The Court deemed the evidence presented by 182 citizens of Taranto to be solid enough to launch a formal proceeding against Italy. Enditem