EIB provides €50m to Veritas for improving water services in Italy

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is providing €50 million in financing for the four-year investment programme of Veritas, the fully publicly owned company managing integrated water services in the Venice Lagoon Basin Council area, which covers 29 municipalities in the Venice metropolitan area and seven in the province of Treviso (Veneto, Italy).

“Improving the efficiency of wastewater collection and treatment systems is vital not only to reducing pollution and risks to human health, but also to returning cleaner water to the area,” said EIB Vice-President Gelsomina Vigliotti. “The EIB is one of the world's biggest lenders to the water sector and the operation signed with Veritas once again confirms the EU bank's commitment to helping locally established companies to strengthen key services for local communities.”

“Ever more efficient treatment of wastewater enables people to live in a better environment, particularly in a very delicate and very heavily visited area such as the Venice Lagoon,” said Veritas President Vladimiro Agostini. “It is wastewater treatment that has given the entire Venetian coastline its Blue Flag status (certifying the excellent quality of the sea, water and services offered) for many years. Protecting the local area and water resources is the top priority of those taking care of the environment as we do. The recently granted EIB financing for Veritas is another important step towards protecting the environment and recycling reclaimed water, aiming to save precious water resources, especially when they can be immediately reused.”

The goal of the project is to increase the efficiency of wastewater collection and treatment systems and perform extraordinary maintenance work needed to improve the efficiency of water networks and public wastewater treatment plants, benefiting over 1.5 million people including population equivalents (workers, tourists, commuters and students). In addition, investments in rainwater management infrastructure and urban drainage systems are planned to limit overloading of the sewerage network in the event of heavy rain and to improve the resilience of infrastructure to extreme weather events.

The work is in line with the Paris Agreements and the targets of the EIB Climate Bank Roadmap. The EIB is the EU climate bank and one of the world's largest lenders to the water sector, with over 1 600 projects and around €79 billion in funding. This financing for Veritas, the second provided by the EIB, comes in addition to agreements recently signed with Iniziative Bresciane (IBRE), BrianzAcque (BA), CAP Group, Tea Spa and Alfa S.r.l.