PROJECT

The Life Trelaghi project consists of various types of activity, which can be summed up in terms of management, technical and promotional tasks:
- tasks of management and promotion (Tasks 1 and 2)
- planning and implementation (Tasks 3, 4 and 5)
- monitoring (Task 6)
- training and certification (Task 7).
The management and promotion activities have involved both beneficiary and partners in a climate of close and trouble-free cooperation.
The project actions are coming to a positive conclusion despite taking some time to get off the ground, and despite some difficulties in the subsequent development of the project activities. These delays were primarily due to the complex approval procedures demanded by the characteristics of the areas involved (the lake of Candia is located within a protected area), but also due to the innovative nature of the solutions adopted by the project, which in turn required innovative and unusual procedures.
The monitoring activities are already under way, even though an initial assessment of the purification efficiency of the installations can only be carried out by a survey campaign after operations have started up in late August. The training activities have been carried out using mixed methodologies, accompanying classroom teaching with platform-based online lessons and forum contacts with the teachers.
Certification, which has been started up for initial classification of the sites, is currently in the process of selecting the environmental policy to be adopted, together with the objectives and the management system to be used for achieving them.
Project management was not without some problems, which slowed down and negatively influenced the regular progress of the planned actions:
- the organisational commitment resulting from LIFE procedures;
- the withdrawal of the co-funder "Comunità Montana n.2 Su Sassu Anglona", which obliged the beneficiary in April 2004 to present a substantial variation proposal to the Commission;
- the delay in the approval by some co-funders of the agreed contribution particularly slowed down the tasks of building the installations, thus causing difficulties to payments to subcontractors.
The project provides for the reduction of eutrophication nutrients by:
1. creating wetland purification systems at Endine and Candia (Task 3),
2. changing agricultural fertilisation methods in the catch basin at Candia (Task 4),
3. restoring the natural purification capacity of the marshes in the lake of Candia (Task 5).

Tasks 3, 4 and 5 have been almost entirely completed. The activities still to be finalised do not affect the operation of the systems already up and running. The objectives can thus be considered to have been reached, and it is now necessary to await the results of the analyses of Task 6 (to be carried out with the scientific partners) for verification of purification efficiency.

As concerns the training activities, the work that has been carried out so far has aimed to raise awareness concerning pollution and purification of the water and the circulation of information about innovative waste-water treatment systems using plants.

The virtual meetings on the web platform and the classroom work for the training course (designed for the staff of public authorities such as the regional and provincial governments, and ARPA), and parallel training activities at SMAT in Turin, the largest integral water-cycle management authority in Italy, have revealed that experts in the sector are very interested in the technologies being put forward by the Trelaghi project, which are innovative and, at the same time, natural and environment-friendly.

As concerns environmental certification, initial fact-finding activities have got underway. By the end of May 2006, the documents to be included in the request for certification of the sites will be complete, which means the sites will be ready for inspection by the certifying authorities by the summer of 2006.