Mayor of Rome lays out 5-year-plan for Tiber transformation

 ROME - “Within five years we will be able to bathe in the Tiber river,” the mayor Roberto Gualtieri has claimed, reports Il Messaggero.

 From the stage at the Osaka Expo, the mayor Roberto Gualtieri repeated what he had already said the previous week: “it will be seaside like the Siene and the operations will cost less, being less polluted than the French river,” but also “we still don’t have a number for how much money it will cost.”

 At the moment, explained the mayor, “we have settled in a group of workers that shortly will be inter-institutional, and I spoke personally with the Environmental minister Pichetto Fratin and with the president of the Rocca region.”

 Even today, “on some days, certain stretches of the Tiber can be bathed in but to have full access, including to the stretch from the Aniene valley, more interventions are necessary. Some are already underway, and the Metropolitan City Police of Rome are carrying out a screening of all of the discharge from the Aniene, outside the land of Rome Capital, given that they are among the main causes for not being safe to bathe in.

 We have identified – continues the mayor – the four required actions, and now with the help of the scientific and technological community and institutions we will carry out a quantification and a schedule. But from the initial works carried out, it is a goal that is definitely at our doorstep.” And meanwhile, concluded the mayor, “I point out that the parks are having a great success.”

 When one talks of interventions on the Tiber, the minds of many Romans jumps to the interpretation of Carlo Verdone in “Gallo Cedrone” (but there the intention was that of tarmacking the entire river because then “it flows”).

 Not even time to relaunch the announcement before the first doubts arrive. To be able to swim in the “blonde river,” indeed, they will need “huge efforts a guarantee the sanitary security of the citizens” declared the president of the Italy Society for Environmental Medicine (SIMA), Alessandro Miani.

 “Today the risks to human health linked to the pollution of the Tiber and its waters are very high,” added the doctor. This is because “the presence of faecal bacteria in the water of the river, such as Escherichia coli, can cause gastrointestinal infections in humans with symptoms such as diarrhoea and vomiting.

 They can then check infections of the skin and eyes because of the contact with contaminated water. Another important risk is leptospirosis, a sickness caused by bacteria found in animal urine such as rats and mice: symptoms include high fever, headaches and muscle pain.

 It is then necessary to consider the exposures to polluting chemicals present in the waters of the river, such as heavy metals, pesticides or other substances, whose harmful effects on health are not immediate but are suffered in the long term.”

 In the afternoon, however, the counter-response arrived from the Councillor for the Environment, Sabrina Alfonsi: “The Tiber is a precious environmental resource, as well as an element of Roman identity and history. And for this reason, our administration, in addition to the already carried out creation of the parks, has decided to face the challenge of bathing. An ambitious goal, which other cities have already completed, such as Paris.”

 To carry out this project, continued Mafonsi “we are constituting a technical board, whose first meeting is scheduled for next Oct., where expert bodies will participate.”

 One of the first activities will be to map the sources of contamination, distinguishing between civil discharges, industrial, mixed or abusive, explained sources from the Department for the Environment. This would be the first step to then plan the necessary interventions. Five years seems like a lot, but time flows quickly.

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