Ischia - Environmental Problems

Environmental Problems

The sharp increase of the population between 1950 and 1980 and the growing inflow of tourists (in 2010 over 4 million tourists have visited the island at least one day) have increased the antropic pressure in the island. Significant acreage of land previously used for agriculture has been developed for the construction of houses and residential structures. Most of this development has been done without any planning and building permission. As the situation is today (end of 2011) the island lacks the most basic system for sewage treatment. The waters from the sewages are directly sent to the sea. One of the five communities of the island started in 2004 the civil works to build a plant for sewage treatment but since then the construction has not been achieved and it is currently stopped.

On 14 June 2007, there was a breakage in one of the four high‑voltage underwater cables forming the power line maintained by Enel S.p.A — although never authorized by Italian authorities — between Cuma on the Campania coast and Lacco Ameno on the island of Ischia. Inside each cable there is an 18 mm‑diameter channel filled with oil under high pressure. The breakage of the Enel cable resulted in the spillage of oil into the sea and into other environmental matrices — with the consequent pollution by polychlorobiphenyls (PCBs, the use of which was banned by the Italian authorities as long ago as 1984), aromatic polycyclic hydrocarbons (APHs) and linear alkyl benzenes (aromatic hydrocarbons) — in the ‘Regno di Nettuno’, a marine protected area, and the largest ecosystem in the Mediterranean Sea, designated as a ‘priority habitat’ in Annex I to the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) and comprising oceanic posidonia beds.