The operational context

Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies that occurs when pollutants are discharged into water bodies without an adequate treatment to remove harmful compounds. The direct or indirect discharge of substances into the aquatic environment leads to results that could cause hazards to human health, harm to living resources and to aquatic ecosystems and damages or interferences with all the legitimate uses of water.

The European Union pays special attention to ecological and health problems linked to water environment with specific legislation, according to the compartment involved, such as: Water Framework Directive, Drinking Water Directive, Urban Waste Treatment Directive, Bathing Waters Directive, REACH Regulation ((Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical). 

In particular, the emission of the so-called “emerging” unregulated organic contaminants has become a priority environmental issue for the preservation of water resources. Emerging contaminants are mainly products used in large quantities in everyday life, such as human and veterinary pharmaceuticals, personal care products, surfactants and surfactant residues. Contaminants of emerging concern are not necessarily new chemicals, but generally, they are neither regulated by the legislation nor newly detected in the
environment.

Persistent Mobile Organic Compounds (PMOC) are, among contaminants of emerging concerns, a case of a particular interest. PMOCs are highly polar compounds and likely to move and persist in the water cycle (e.g. drinking water and irrigation), they degrade very slowly and are very mobile in the water matrix and often in biological tissues.

Exposure to PMOC can lead to serious health effects, which in many cases can not be adequately and effectively assessed due to lack of monitoring data, adequate knowledge of the eco-toxicological properties of new substances and difficulties in managing the emergency situations. This is the case of the most important family belonging to PMOC, which are the perfluorinated substances (PFAS), the main issue of the LIFE PHOENIX project. This problem, in an overall view of water protection, takes a high priority in European policymaking.

In the specific area of the project – i.e. the phreatic zone of medium-lower Agno Valley (Vicenza Province) – several episodes of pollution took place in the past, due to the high density of production sites and industries. More recently (2013), following a report by IRSA-CNR, committed by the Italian Environmental Ministry (Ministero dell’Ambiente e della Tutela del Territorio e del Mare), new investigations assessed a more severe contamination episode characterized by dispersion of PFAS in the surface and ground waters of the same area, with PFOA and PFBS among the most abundant compounds.

The source of contamination has been identified in a chemichal plant producing PFAS since the late Sixties. Specific studies demonstrated the propagation of PFAS through the phreatic table and the close interconnection between surface and ground waters bodies compromising all the water system of the area. The water outflow and hydrogeological network are quite complex because they are composed of different branched water bodies – such as resurgences, which are also important for irrigation. Furthermore, drainage effects are critical in this area characterized by specific habitats. 

The reference area is located in the Vicenza province, in the northern part of Veneto Region, between Lessini Mountains and the contiguous plain in southern direction until the area of Colli Berici and the Municipality of Vicenza. Nowadays the total catchment area involves three Provinces (Vicenza, Padova and Verona) with a total area of about 595 km2 and 150,000 inhabitants. However the total estimated involved area is wider (930 km2). During the emergency phase several PFAS where detected with range of concentration from 10 up to 60000 ng L-1 along the plume axis. In order to manage the contamination, Veneto Region has undertaken a complex series of actions that have proved to be very expensive.

Therefore, this specific PFAS contamination represents an ideal case study to demonstrate the possible application of an integrated and multidisciplinary and inter-institutional action, as proposed by the LIFE PHOENIX Project, which can be proposed for other compounds with similar characteristics of persistence and mobility (i.e. other PMOCs). This approach has been thought mainly has a preventive governance system to avoid future contaminations phenomena and to save public money.