Pedotechnologies for the Environmental Reclamation of limestone quarries. A protocol proposal

Abstract

The omitted reclamation of quarrying sites in the Campania region (Italy), especially in Caserta province, represents a dramatic source of territory instability, landscape deterioration and social-cultural apprehension. The main problems arise from the systematic failure to comply with the Environmental Reclamation laws in force, the weakness of judicial supervisions and the lack of specific sanctions to be applied in the event of non-compliance. Additionally, the environmental reclamation still represents a prohibitive cost for the quarrying entrepreneurs, just because it is not considered as a possible investment for the company’s conversion to new lines of production. On these bases, we considered the chance to turn the closing down of quarrying into other sustainable business activities, able to guarantee not only the environmental safeguarding according to the law, but also the social-economic progress. The present paper describes a study-case intervention of pedotechnologies as a reference protocol – within the whole of reclamation activities – to ad hoc designing and building Technosols, suitable for an environmental reclamation addressed to the agricultural reuse of abandoned limestone quarries.