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Court says Milan waste water not properly treated |
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| LUXEMBOURG: April 29, 2002 | ||
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LUXEMBOURG - The European Court of Justice found last week that Italy had failed to comply with clean water rules by allowing Milan's urban waste water to be discharged into environmentally sensitive areas before being properly treated.
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Under European law, all member states were required to adopt and implement national and municipal rules on urban waste water discharges into "sensitive areas" - so that they could be subjected to more stringent treatment - by 1998. Under Italian law, the River Po delta and the north-west coast of the Adriatic Sea, from the mouth of the Adige to Pesaro, and all water which flows into them over a distance of 10 km (6.25 miles) from the coast, are identified as sensitive areas. The European Commission asked the court to find that Italy failed to fulfil its requirements to comply with European rules on water protection. This was because Milan does not have a waste water treatment plant and its human waste from a population of 2.7 million people is discharged directly, without prior treatment, into the Lambro-Olona river system, and then into the River Po, which flows into an area of the Adriatic. Italy asked that it be allowed to streamline the treatment procedure until it could build three planned treatment plants, and argued that Milan is not in any of the sensitive areas identified. "It makes no difference in this regard whether the waste water discharges directly or indirectly into a sensitive area: the directive makes no distinction between direct and indirect discharges into sensitive areas," the court said in a statement. **** Case C-396/00 European Commission v Italian Republic THE COURT declared in a statement: Italy has failed to fulfil its obligations under the directive on urban waste water, because discharges from milan are released into sensitive areas, without being subjected to specific treatment.
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REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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