Our environmental interventions in Crotone

At the Crotone site, we manage groundwater and soil remediation interventions in former Agricoltura, Pertusola, and Fosfotec areas, as well as in the two former seafront landfills. We also carry out aquifer interventions in the former Sasol area in response to the February 2023 decree.

As part of the groundwater remediation project, we have progressively constructed a hydraulic barrier which, as confirmed by periodic monitoring by the relevant authorities, ensures contamination containment within the site perimeter. The extracted water is sent for treatment to the public CORAP (Regional Consortium for the Development of Productive Activities) plant.

Regarding soil remediation, we have completed the topsoil removal activities by portions of the former Agricoltura and Pertusola areas, the breakwaters to protect the remediation site areas, and the preparatory activities for the excavations required by the POB Phase 2 (2020 Decree).

The continuation of the POB Phase 2 activities consists of two lines of intervention: the excavation and disposal of approximately 1 million tons of remediation waste (non-hazardous and hazardous, including TENORM and TENORM with asbestos) from the two former landfills and internal areas of the plant, and the application of in-situ remediation technologies to reduce groundwater contamination.

The start of the excavation, initially scheduled for 2024, was delayed due to the veto placed by the Regional Single Authorising Provision (PAUR) on disposal in regional landfills, despite Crotone housing the only Italian landfill available for hazardous waste. The issuance in August 2024 of the Ministerial Decree for the Excerpt POB Phase 2 authorised hazardous waste disposal in the Crotone landfill. However, local authorities challenged the decree and warned Eni Rewind to comply with the PAUR constraint, effectively preventing the beginning of interventions.

At the beginning of 2025, we completed the scouting of foreign landfills, as required by the MASE decree of August 2024, identifying three in Sweden and one in Germany, and we started the cross-border authorisation procedures, ith the approval in May by the Swedish authorities of the export of up to 45,000 tons of hazardous waste by July 2026, in June 2025 we have begun the excavation in the former Pertusola landfill area. For the disposal of non-hazardous waste, we have signed contracts with five landfills outside Calabria, while the hazardous waste is conferred via ship and train to Sweden.

This option can only be complementary to the use of the Crotone landfill, given the logistical complexity of delivering waste abroad, which could lead to construction site shutdowns, as well as the risk that notifications will not be renewed starting in May 2026, also for the implementation of EU Regulation 2024/1157, which imposes restrictions on the traffic of waste within Europe and to non-EU countries.

Following the decision of the Calabria Regional Administrative Court in August 2025 annulling the 2024 Decree, a new ministerial authorisation process is underway. At the same time, excavation activities continue in compliance with the regulatory framework included in the latest Decree.

Retracing the history of the Crotone site's environmental procedures can help to understand the complexity and difficulty of implementing the interventions for the management of approximately 1 million tons of waste. In the 2000s, with the launch of the emergency safety measures and characterisation activities, the remediation was entrusted to a commissarial management, which ended without significant progress. For this reason, in 2008, we were recalled by the Ministry of the Environment to continue the remediation interventions. That same year, we submitted a comprehensive site remediation programme that included specific projects for both groundwater and soil matrices, including the one for the removal of the seafront landfills with the disposal of the remediation waste in a new landfill to be built in Giammiglione, in accordance with the then Regional Waste Plan. The local authorities rejected this plan. From 2009, we have submitted a number of projects that envisaged alternative solutions for the management of materials in the former landfills, and only in 2017 a convergence was reached with the Ministry, the then Commissioner and local authorities on a new project divided into two phases: phase 1 concerning the breakwaters for the protection of the remediation sites, and phase 2 for the removal of the former seafront landfills and the completion of interventions in the areas inside the plant, primarily through excavation and disposal activities. Regarding the excavation interventions, since 2017 we have spoken about and documented the lack of landfills suitable for receiving waste from the excavations envisaged in the operative remediation project (POB) phase 2. However, the Ministerial Decree of March 2020 implemented the 2019 Regional Single Authorising Provision (PAUR) with which the local authorities approved the realisation of the preliminary temporary storage facility (D15) for materials, with the requirement that the waste moved there will be disposed of outside of the Calabria region. This requirement clearly conflicts with the EU principle of proximity and self-sufficiency in waste management, especially considering the presence of a suitable landfill just a few kilometers away from the site. Specifically, the waste produced by the excavations planned for POB Phase 2 is estimated at approximately 1 million tons, half of which is non-hazardous and therefore disposable in operational landfills in other Italian regions. The remaining waste consists of around 360,000 tons of hazardous waste (which in Italy can only be disposed of in the Crotone landfill), approximately 50,000 tons containing Tenorm, and over 100,000 tons containing both Tenorm and asbestos (which can only be disposed of following a specific prefectural procedure pursuant to Legislative Decree101/2020). Following the lack of response to the requests for PAUR amendments we submitted between 2022 and 2024, the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security has convened a new Service Conference. Despite the negative opinion of local authorities, on 1 August 2024, the Ministry issued the decree authorising the excerpt project of the POB Phase 2 for the excavation and disposal of non-Tenorm materials, enabling the disposal of hazardous waste at the Crotone landfill and at the same time requiring to begin a scouting process for facilities abroad. For the disposal of non-hazardous waste (approximately 50% of the total volume envisaged by the POB Phase 2), we have contracted five landfills outside the Calabria region. However, local authorities first challenged the MASE decree of August 2024 and subsequently warned Eni Rewind to comply with the constraint placed by the PAUR, and the Crotone landfill not to accept remediation waste. In January 2025 we completed the scouting process on landfills abroad, as requested by the MASE decree, with the identification of three suitable ones in Sweden and one in Germany, and we started the authorisation process for the cross-border procedure. In June 2025, the excavation activities began. While the non-hazardous waste is disposed of in Italian landfills outside the region, the hazardous waste, given the PAUR ban on the use of the Sovreco landfill in Crotone, is disposed of in two landfills in Sweden, for which cross-border notifications were obtained (in May and July 2025) for a total volume of up to 45,000 tons by July 2026.The August 2025 Calabria Regional Administrative Court (TAR) decision annulled the August 2024 Decree, although it confirmed that the choice on waste disposal from remediation is solely up to the responsible entity and that the PAUR restriction can be reformed in a new Decree. The Ministry has therefore convened a Service Conference in August 2025 to define the new authorisation process (currently underway). Given both the environmental impact and the risk of delays related to distance and complex intermodal logistics and, above all, the impossibility of guaranteeing the continuation of remediation excavations following the entry into force of the EU Regulation prohibiting the export of waste in May 2026, it remains necessary to overcome the restriction on the disposal of waste outside the region.At the same time, in June 2025, we started new scouting activities to identify disposal facilities for TENORM waste both in Italy and abroad. The search, however, confirmed the lack of suitable destinations for the disposal of such materials. We have therefore communicated the updates to all relevant authorities and requested a meeting of the prefectural advisory commission to evaluate possible management solutions.

Within the Crotone-Cassano-Cerchiara Site of National Priority (SIN), although we are not owners of the land, we carried out remediation activities at three unauthorised landfills located in the province of Cosenza, in Chidichimo and TrePonti, in the municipality of Cassano allo Ionio, and in Capraro, in the municipality of Cerchiara di Calabria. The landfills contained production waste from the Pertusola Sud plant in Crotone, which was permanently closed in 1999. Following the approval by ministerial decree of the operative remediation project for the three landfills, between 2010 and 2011 we removed soil mixed with zinc ferrites and disposed of it in authorised external landfills. We later completed the morphological recovery and final restoration with plants. Between 2015 and 2016, Arpa Calabria issued the test validation for all three areas and in 2016 the Province of Cosenza issued the certification of completed remediation.