Caffaro di Torviscosa (formerly Grado and Marano Lagoon)

Torviscosa is a company town built between 1937 and 1942 around the SNIA Viscosa works, which made cellulose and man-made fibres such as rayon. In the 1950s Caffaro, a SNIA group company, started the chlor-alkali plant; a coal-fired power station followed in 1961. Part of the complex is still working: Caffaro Industrie makes chemical intermediates and a new membrane chlor-alkali plant has run since 2017.

Decades of waste remain inside and next to the works: an area south of the dock long used as a dump, a pitch deposit, two dredging-spoil basins along the Banduzzi canal and the Valletta landfill, 7 km away at the confluence of the Ausa and Corno rivers. The soil holds metals, hydrocarbons, BTEX, PAHs, dioxins and furans, PCBs and aromatic amines; the groundwater also chlorinated aliphatics; the sediments of the Banduzzi canals hold mercury from the chlor-alkali plant. The pyrite cinders, left over from roasting ore to obtain sulphur, contain arsenic, copper, zinc, lead, cadmium and cobalt.

The site was listed in 2001 as "Laguna di Grado e Marano", and in 2003 its perimeter took in 60% of the lagoon. From 2002 a government commissioner worked mainly on sediment characterisation and on dredging for navigation. In 2012 the lagoon was taken out of the perimeter: most of the mercury in its sediments comes from the Idrija mining district, by way of the Isonzo river, while Caffaro's contribution is local. Since 2017 the site has carried the name of the plant.

The programme agreement signed on 28 October 2020 by the Ministry and the Region is worth 48.7 million euros and covers removal of the pitches, restoration of the hydraulic barrier and permanent securing of the landfills. Since 2024 the works have been run by the Consorzio di Bonifica Pianura Friulana, which in 18 months covered 67,000 m² of landfill with an impermeable layer.