The Sicilian Region has allocated 50 million euros as a contribution to the Municipalities to compensate for the increased costs incurred for the transfer of waste abroad. This is the content of the decree of the regional department of Water and Waste, which also approved the list of applications considered admissible.
«It was a commitment – says the president of the Sicilian Region Renato Schifani – that we had made with the mayors and that we have kept. The regional government is working on waste management on several fronts, starting with the new Plan that will soon be definitively released. A tool that will allow us to intervene definitively with the construction of two public waste-to-energy plants, already financed with 800 million from the FSC, and other waste treatment plants, with the aim of increasing the percentage of separate waste collection. In the meantime, we have also resolved some critical issues that had arisen in the Sicula Trasporti TMB plant, preventing the state of environmental and health and hygiene emergency in about 200 municipalities”.
«We can thus give a concrete response to the cry for help from Sicilian mayors and Anci – adds the regional councillor for Energy, Roberto Di Mauro – The corrective measure approved by the ARS and just published has allowed the department to quickly commit this sum to cover the so-called extra costs sustained by the Municipalities in the waste sector».
The decree provides that the final determination of the amount and disbursement of the contribution will be subject to the favorable outcome of the verification, for each Municipality, of compliance with the regulations regarding the delivery of waste to plants inside and outside the region, of the uploading of data on the Orso platform (Supra-regional Waste Observatory), of the declarations of truthfulness and of the actual time period of delivery of waste outside the region, according to the criteria established by law.