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Assessing the impact of the remedial actions taken at a contaminated Italian site: an ex-post valuation analysis

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Abstract

The remediation and reuse of industrial brownfields sites offers important opportunities for the improvement of urban quality of life. The aim of this paper is to estimate the primary costs and benefits of different cleanup projects implemented in Venice Porto Marghera, Italy. The industrial area of Porto Marghera is one of the most notorious contaminated sites of national interest in Italy; at this site, vacant and polluted areas coexist, posing several problems for the local government and community. However, this site also represents one of the primary strategic areas for the future development and the economic renaissance of the entire Veneto Region. In fact, the area is located in the heart of the northeast, close to the main transport networks, and it is provided with a full range of urban services and infrastructure. The area for the national priority list site of Porto Marghera extends over 3,500 ha, and in the last 10 years, different cleanup interventions have been implemented to rehabilitate the area under various regulatory systems. However, only a small number of these interventions can be considered to be completed or have been certified by law. This paper performs a retrospective cost–benefit analysis of these case studies to provide information for potential regulatory modifications, insights and knowledge for methodological improvements in prospective economic assessments and information for local and central governments to use in implementing the remaining remediation activities.

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Notes

  1. The origin of CBA probably can be attributable to the work of a French engineer and economist, Jules Dupuit (Pearce 1998).

  2. Art. 130 r(3) of the Maastricht Treaty (1992) requires “in preparing its policy on the environment, the Community shall take account of available scientific and technical data, environmental conditions in the various regions of the Community, the potential benefits and costs of action or lack of action, and the economic and social development of the Community as a whole and the balanced development of its regions”.

  3. The World Bank regularly implements ex-post CBA and recommends that ex-post analyses investigate specific policy impacts in depth, rather than necessarily attempting an evaluation of the total net impact (Nera Economic Consulting 2004).

  4. For example, it is estimated that the appreciation of the the real estate property value for residential properties located close to the urban park is approximately 7–9 % (Mayor et al. 2009).

  5. It is a theoretical calculation; we are well aware that it is quite trivial to transfer information from a US study to an Italian context without adjusting the existing value to better reflect the value for the site under consideration or without considering the objective differences between the two contexts.

  6. This assumption is conservative, based on the fact that the Jammin’ Heineken Festival will be held in another location for the upcoming years, and this was the most attended event of the park.

  7. The choice of a discount rate is one of the most debated issues in CBA (Hanley and Barbier 2009; Gollier and Weitzman 2010). For environmental CBA, Weitzman (2001) conclude that the appropriate discount rate when the time horizon is comprised between 6 and 25 years is 3 %.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a grant from the Consortium for the Coordination and Management of Research on the Lagoon of Venice (CO.RI.LA.).

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  1. Department of Design and Planning in Complex Environments, University IUAV of Venice, Santa Croce 1957, 30135, Venice, Italy

    Stefania Tonin

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  1. Stefania Tonin
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Correspondence to Stefania Tonin.

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Tonin, S. Assessing the impact of the remedial actions taken at a contaminated Italian site: an ex-post valuation analysis. Rev Environ Sci Biotechnol 13, 121–137 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11157-014-9332-8

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