ABSTRACT
The Bagnoli Bay (Napoli, Southern Italy) has been long subjected to environmental contamination, due to a large steel plant, which occupied a significant part of its territory for nearly one century. However, it is also part of a wide volcanic area, where an active caldera exists. An environmental survey of nearshore and offshore marine sediments carried out in 2017, revealed concentrations of Arsenic nearly seven times higher than those permitted by law. These concentrations showed not necessarily correlated with the anthropogenic sources, thereby requiring supplementary analyses. Via multidisciplinary numerical tests conducted with the software package Delft-3D, this paper investigates the role of a creek that has been long used to convey thermal water from the upstream volcanic area to the coast. The model results compares reasonably well with marine sediments survey.
Located in the North-Western part of the Gulf of Napoli (South Italy), the Bagnoli Bay is part of the Phlegrean Fields, a large volcanic area with a long history, dating back to the ancient Greek settlers (sixth century B.C). Since the early XX century, Bagnoli has been home of a large steel plant, which has reached a 2 million m2 surface in the late seventies. After the plant had been demitted, in 1992, scientists from different disciplines have been working together, to provide the area with an effective environmental restoring. In this respect, a key role is now played by the project ABBaCO (Stazione Zoologica Dohrn, 2020), funded by the Italian Ministry of Research, in the frame of which a remarkable effort is being produced to return Bagnoli its original beach, possibly protected with environmentally friendly low reflective structures (Buccino et al., 2014 , 2018). However, given the geological nature of the site, and the strong environmental impact produced by the old steel plant, the analysis of sediment contamination represent a primary variable to urgently account.
