Ensuring the quality and healthiness of marine waters: from 2019 the mission of the European project ADSWIM Italy-Croatia continues, involving 6 research institutes, 2 municipalities, 1 national institute of public hygiene and 3 companies for the collection, treatment and supply of wastewater with the aim of harmonizing and improving urban wastewater treatment, control and management strategies to protect the sea and protect the habitat along the Adriatic coast.
"#WorldWaterDay is celebrated on March 22 and once again this year together with the project partners of Udine, Pescara, Ancona and Split we are carrying out a series of initiatives that involve teachers, researchers and all citizens," says Giulia Manzan, Councilor for European Projects and Participation of the Municipality of Udine.
Until June 8, the international date that celebrates the seas around the world, the Adswim didactic training course for primary school teachers will continue. On March 22 there will be a special appointment thanks to the laboratory of researchers of the Polytechnic University of Marche who will analyse "life in a drop of water" live online with microscopes. On March 25, the engineers of CAFC ltd of Udine Nicola De Bortoli and Tommaso Martin will hold the webinar "the operation of the depuration plant and discharge points into the sea, containment of the anthropic impact" and demonstrate how it is possible to build a mini depurator in the classroom and explain the purification process to the pupils. The training module for teachers started in January and is developed in 8 online appointments. It is sponsored by the University of Udine with MIUR certification and is also offered to bilingual schools in Croatia, thanks to the support of the Italian Union.
With the spirit aimed at educating the little ones about respect for the sea and the protection of natural resources as part of the national and cross-border dissemination and training campaign entitled "Do you Sea?", The Municipality of Udine, responsible for coordinating the communication of the project, and CAFC announce that until June there will be didactic labs and guided visits to the depuration plant in Friuli (remotely or in person based on the epidemiological situation dictated by the pandemic) for at least five classes of the Zorutti and Silvio Pellico primary schools of Udine.
CAFC, together with the Split Water Management Company (VIK) , decided to produce informative videos to present the technical commitment and activities that the two companies are carrying out as part of the project at a local level to improve urban wastewater management. The guided virtual visit of the Split treatment plant Stupe will be launched on the ADSWIM youtube channel on the occasion of the International Water Day, while the CAFC video will be released in June, on the occasion of the celebration of the seas and will show us the laying of reefballs - an artificial barrier of fish repopulation, a naturalistic engineering work carried out to promote the marine biodiversity of the seabed along the coast of the Lignano treatment plant in Friuli Venezia Giulia Region.
The Municipality of Udine and CAFC are committed, together with the Split Water Management company (VIK), the University of Split, the Municipality of Pescara, Izvor Ploče and the National Institute of Public Hygiene of Zadar, also to design new strategies for the treatment of waste water in both countries.
"It was possible to create an operational and management network for the improvement of water treatment and to apply innovative monitoring technologies and common management practices for the safeguarding of the ecological status of the waters of the north-eastern Adriatic to achieve the water quality objectives envisaged by the Directive EU 2000 ", declares the President of CAFC, Salvatore Benigno who, on the occasion of World Water Day, announces the further phases of the Interreg project which sees CAFC as the protagonist in training workshops for operators and technicians and not only in didactic activities aimed at schools to illustrate urban wastewater management within the Water Safety Plan program. "We are in the pipeline" - announces President Benigno - "for the preparation of common guidelines with Croatia concerning the wastewater management to respect the sea and the environment, values that need to be protected also for the important consequences in the tourism economy of the regions of the upper Adriatic."
"Our journey of the water cycle and environmental education starts from the sea of Ancona, Pescara and Split and ends with CAFC in Lignano. Because in any form, water is our connector and we must make it the core of the solutions to be undertaken at all levels, especially during the year that includes new objectives for environmental sustainability and biodiversity as well as new and urgent objectives in the climatic change field. The sea is one, its care belongs to everybody”, concludes Councilor Giulia Manzan of the Municipality of Udine.
