DISUSED QUARRIES ON THE SORRENTO COAST. LOCAL HISTORY, ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE AND REUSE

Abstract

Mining activities play a prominent role in landscape deterioration, and their effects are especially evident in the Sorrento peninsula, where many quarries have been working along the coast for more than seventy years. Although it has always been an essential area of the local economy, the intensive exploitation of limestone ridges (as analyzed in the first part of this essay) has given rise to many territorial management issues which have been worsened by the closing down of the main coastal mines and by the ways they are being reused. The inadequacy of the national and local laws allowed the ruin of an area with high environmental value, which resulted in the conversion of many disused structures into tourist facilities, while more appropriate operations could have capitalized better on their potentials. Since the locating of tourist infrastructure in a mine site is very questionable and the configuration of the land makes it extremely difficult the re-naturalization, any idea of reuse should therefore involve the rehabilitation and valorization of abandoned workplaces, such as the mining park in the Jeranto bay created by FAI, the Fund for Italian Environment.