The new generations will have no memory, but at least until the sixties of the twentieth century in the Tiber was swimming. Then, with the increase in pollution caused by industrialization and diseases transmitted by mice, the first ordinances against its bathingness arrived.
And to date, in fact, those who bathe in the river of the capital can run into a fine of hundreds of euros and, not even to say, to any health problems.
But if you return to the origins? The mayor Gualtieri sap the Parisian modeling model of the Senna and relaunches (he had already tried in the past) in view of his second possible mandate.
As reported by the Republicthe first citizen of the capital commissioned the councilor for the environment Sabrina Alfonsi to establish a technical table with Arpa, Lazio Region, Ministry of the Environment, Basin Authority and Metropolitan City to start a scientific and operational path towards “a clean and usable river“.
How long will that take?
The mayor Gualtieri has identified as priority the interventions on the industrial plants that unload in the Tiber and the Aniene, a tributary that joins the main river in the northern area of the capital. He mentioned the example of Paris, who in 2024 had made the seaside senna after massive investments for the purification of the waters, so as to host a few Olympic swimming competitions in the river itself and at the same time expressed regret in order not to be able to count on funds similar to those that the city of Paris itself obtained thanks to the Olympics, launching an indirect criticism of the former mayor Virginia Raggi for having withdrawn the candidacy Rome at the games of 2024.
However, an alternative could be represented by the funding provided for the extraordinary Jubilee of 2033, which will celebrate the two thousand years since the death of Jesus.
At the moment, in short, there is still no official estimate of the costs necessary to make the Tiber bathing, but it is clear that it would be high figures. It would be necessary to intervene both on sewage plants – to eliminate bacterial contamination – and industrial ones, which represent a more complex threat due to chemical pollutants. Paris took years of work and about 1.4 billion euros to redevelop the Seine, and despite this, there are still problems due to levels of pollution still too high.
Will Rome be able to deal with all this?
