Italian authorities on Saturday said they were monitoring an oil slick off the country’s picturesque Riviera coast, but said the risk of a new spill into the Mediterranean was limited.
The slick, which was 2km long and 500m wide, was slowly moving west from waters off Genoa, raising fears it could pollute holiday beaches just as the tourist season begins.
The oil is believed to have come from a pipeline leak on April 17 at a refinery at Bussala, an outlying suburb of the northwestern Italian city, that spilled large quantities of crude into the Polcevera River.
Photo: EPA
The refinery’s owner, Iplom, insisted that the leak was contained, but one of the barriers erected on the river gave way on Saturday morning after heavy overnight rain, pushing crude oil into the sea.
After declaring a local state of emergency, Genoa’s port authority and the government said that backup floating barriers in the mouth of the river had done their job.
“The situation is delicate, but under control,” Italian Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Graziano Delrio said.
Genova is located in the middle of the Italian stretch of the Riviera, close to the famous resort of Portofino and several protected areas of outstanding natural beauty, including the Cinque Terre region.
The maritime environment is also highly prized, with the coastal waters providing valuable breeding grounds for sea life, as well as supporting a fishing fleet that serves the local restaurant trade.
Genoa Mayor Marco Doria said that the large slick and several smaller ones spotted by fishermen and coast guard vessels had presumably been caused by the refinery leak on Sunday last week.
“From an environmental point of view, I am calm,” Iplom local safety officer Gianfranco Benedetti said.
“There was no new leak into the sea. There is not much stuff left in the Polcevera, most of it has been extracted by gully suckers,” he told reporters.
Maritime authorities in Toulon, France, said they had immediately ordered heightened monitoring in the area, with the navy dispatching a Falcon 50 airplane to assess the situation.
“The flight detected no slick off France and in international waters up to Savona,” just east of Genoa, they said in a statement.
Further French surveillance flights were scheduled for yesterday and the coming days.
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