Panel 1
Roberta De Angelis
The quality of bathing waters is fundamental for safeguarding citizens' health and also plays an important role from the perspective of protecting the natural environment and in terms of economic aspects in the tourism sector. For this reason, specific monitoring is carried out throughout the entire bathing season.
For the 2023 bathing season, more than 31,000 samples of sea and lake water were collected and analyzed over a total of more than 5,000 km of coastline designated for bathing.
At the municipal level, the kilometers of coastline are divided into more or less extensive bathing waters, for a total of 5,490 bathing waters.
The results of the analyses, in addition to ensuring the absence of health and hygiene risks during the season, also made it possible to classify the waters.
The classification was made using the monitoring results from the 2023 bathing season and those of the previous three seasons (2022-2021-2020).
At the national level, most of the waters fall into the excellent class (90.6%), however, critical issues still persist due to the presence of waters in the poor class (1.3%) and not classifiable (0.5%), for which it is not possible to express a quality judgment.
Also at the regional level, the percentage of waters in the excellent class is the highest and in some cases equals 100%.
In almost all regions, the waters in the sufficient and poor classes are decreasing, but the presence of the latter still prevents the full achievement of the directive’s objective.
LDirective 2006/7/EC concerning the management of the quality of bathing waters, transposed in Italy with Legislative Decree of 30 May 2008, no. 116 and implemented with the Ministerial Decree of the Ministry of Health of 30 March 2010, provides that each water be assigned a quality class (excellent, good, sufficient, and poor).
The indicator reports the number of waters falling into each class, at national and regional level, and is developed on the basis of the “seasonal information” (Table 2, Annex F, DM 30 March 2010) which the Ministry of Health transmits annually to SINTAI pursuant to Art. 6 of DM 30 March 2010.
For 2023, the data provided by SNPA were also used, collected within the scope of the bathing activity line related to the thematic network of marine, marine-coastal and transitional waters (RRTEM_10).
In calculating the qualitative status, in some cases waters were considered as groupings following cases of contiguous waters with uniform characteristics (Art. 7, paragraph 6, Legislative Decree 116/2008).
This could cause differences in the number of waters among the various sector publications.
It provides an indicative description of the microbiological qualitative status of bathing waters, however, it does not offer any indication about possible impacts deriving from other types of pollution sources.
To assess the degree of bathing suitability of a water body associated with a health and hygiene risk and to provide indications regarding the presence of microbiological contamination.
In fact, on the one hand it provides environmental indications of the level of microbiological contamination (fecal pathogens), and on the other it expresses the probability of contracting a disease associated with the aforementioned contamination during recreational activity (from excellent to poor class the probability increases).
Furthermore, it allows an indirect estimate of the effectiveness of wastewater treatment systems and to assess over time the effectiveness of any remediation measures adopted.
Indeed, the legislation provides that improvement measures be implemented so that bathing waters are at least of sufficient class and, in any case, that each water can improve its qualitative status or maintain it if it is already excellent.
The indicator complies with the requirements of European Directive 2006/7/EC, which provides for the seasonal monitoring of bathing waters and their classification, based on monitoring data relating to 4 years.
The goal of the directive is to no longer have waters in the poor class and to increase the number of those in the excellent class.
Panel 2
SINTAI - http://www.sintai.isprambiente.it
European Environment Agency - https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/water/europes-seas-and-coasts/assessments/state-of-bathing-water/state-of-bathing-waters-in-2023
It offers an orientational description of the qualitative state of bathing water at the microbiological level, not providing, however, any indication of any possible impacts deriving from sources of pollution of other kinds.
Data quality assessment
National, Regional
2013-2023
Indicator assessment
The indicator is processed by grouping bathing waters belonging to each quality class at regional and national level. The classification is carried out on the basis of monitoring results related to the 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 campaigns.
As shown in Figure 1, at the national level, the percentage of excellent quality waters is high compared to the European average (90% versus the EU’s 85%).
At the regional level (Figure 2), and in general, it can be stated that the number of waters in the excellent and good classes is very high in all regions, however, the presence of poor waters in 11 regions prevents the full achievement of the directive’s objective.
As can be seen from Figure 3, the trend is positive until 2017, as the waters in the poor class decrease and those of higher quality, especially excellent and good, increase.
From 2017 to 2019, there is a reversal: waters in the excellent class decrease and those in the poor class increase.
In 2020, a slight improvement is reported: in fact, poor-class waters begin to decrease again while higher-class ones, particularly excellent, increase.
In 2023, the trend towards improvement is confirmed due to the increase in the number of waters in the good and excellent classes and the decrease in those in the poor and not classifiable classes, demonstrating that this last category of waters often contains waters of higher quality and not necessarily poor.
Data
Figure 1: National classification bathing water monitoring 2020-2023
ISPRA processing on SNPA and EEA data
Figure 2: Regional classification bathing water monitoring 2020-2023
ISPRA processing on SNPA and EEA data
Figure 3: Trend of bathing water classification
ISPRA processing on SNPA and EEA data
During the 2023 bathing season in Italy, 5,490 bathing waters were classified. Of these:
4,973 belong to the excellent class,
310 to the good class,
101 to the sufficient class, and
70 to the poor class.
The number of non-classified waters is 30, and for these, it is not possible to make any assessment.
In all regions, the number of excellent waters is higher than the other classes, and if waters in the good class are also added, this value exceeds 90% (Figure 2).
Waters in the poor class are present in variable numbers in the following regions: Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Liguria, Marche, Lazio, Abruzzo, Campania, Calabria, Sicily, Sardinia.
There are still some regions with non-classifiable waters for which it was not possible to express a quality judgment for various reasons, mainly because they are newly identified waters and have not reached the minimum number of samples required for classification.
The deterioration of the qualitative status of a bathing water is attributable to several factors, the most important of which remains the functionality of wastewater treatment systems.
In fact, bathing water monitoring evaluates the presence of fecal contamination, mainly derived from urban discharges.
When factors compromise their effectiveness, such as breakdowns or heavy rainfall events, these systems release untreated effluents into the environment, compromising bathing suitability.
Examples include the heavy rains that occurred in recent seasons, as they caused several treatment plants to go haywire, with the consequent release of untreated effluents.
Unfortunately, these events delay the achievement of the directive’s goal and draw attention to better land management to which the bathing water belongs, also in relation to climate change.
In general, the results of the monitoring carried out during the 2023 season showed a slight improvement, due to the maintenance of the high number of waters in the excellent and good classes and a decrease in the number of waters in the poor class.