Biography
Piero Bruni, president of the Associazione Lago di Bolsena, was born in Florence in 1927 to a family originally from Capodimonte. Graduating in engineering with a specialisation in subsoil geophysical prospecting, after 2 years spent in Switzerland and Egypt he undertook geophysical research with the Schlumberger Society in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, USA and France.
Piero Bruni began his work for the protection of Lake Bolsena in the 1960s, being involved in the establishment of a section of the association Italia Nostra. In 1987 he was among the founding members of the Associazione Lago di Bolsena, encouraged by Prince Giovanni del Drago who took over the Presidency. From 2006 Piero Bruni has been Executive President while Giovanni del Drago has became Honorary President. In 2008 he received an international prize from the Global Nature Fund “in recognition of his work and dedication to the protection and conservation of nature”.
Piero Bruni and his associates have been engaged in many battles to safeguard the lake. In the 1960s ‘Project Angelini’ wanted to use the lakes of central Italy as storage reservoirs for the nuclear power plant at Montalto di Castro. This project would have destroyed the Lake Bolsena ecosystem, causing fluctuations of the water level by up to 4 metres, and mixing its waters with the murky and polluted waters of the Tiber. The volunteers were helped by the then owner of the «Corriere della Sera», Giulia Maria Crespi, and managed to stop the project. Crucial to this success were Alessandro Fioravanti (the first Lake Bolsena environmentalist volunteer) and Massimo Faggiani of Capodimonte.
Shortly afterwards, the beautiful Mount Bisenzio, site of Etruscan Vesentum, was chosen by a Political Secretary of the time who planned to carve it up for his business. Unexpectedly, a small section of Italia Nostra, thanks to the personal efforts of Fabiano Fagliari Zeni Buchicchio, of Rosanna Faggiani and of German television, managed to have an archaeological restraint put on the area.
With the passing of time the problem of pollution became more pressing. In 1987 Giovanni del Drago established the Associazione Lago di Bolsena, which succeeded the Italia Nostra section with the same members. A long, spread out and determined work of awareness and information about threats to the lake began. Over the years, all of the slaughterhouses which had been pouring blood into the lake were moved, the municipal landfill sites which had leached into the soil were closed, and a collector to gather waste water was built – this last of maximum importance for the protection of the lake.
The Association began systematic monitoring of the lake, numerous courses and educational publications. In 2002 with the collaboration of the Hydrobiological Institute of Pallanza, the international ‘Residence Time in Lakes’ conference, of which Piero Bruni was Chairman of the Organising Committee, was held in Bolsena. Participating at the conference, other than many Italians, were the world’s most noted limnologists, coming from Japan, Israel, Finland, Austria, USA, Hungary, Russia, China, Poland, etc.
In 2002 in Latera, ENEL put into service a geothermal power plant, harmful to health and to the environment. Opposing this work were a German doctor W. Wirbatz and the honourable Laura Allegrini who organised a large public protest. In support, the Associazione Lago di Bolsena documented the risk of polluting the groundwater with arsenic. Finally the Province ruled for the closure of the plant. In recent years the danger of exploitation of medium and high enthalpy has re-emerged with numerous projects around the lake. Bruni is active in informing on the grave risks of pollution and corrosion of the groundwater of the lake, of induced earthquakes and of a global pollution of water, air and soil.
In 2016 Ferdinando del Drago succeeded the late Prince Giovanni as Honorary President of the Associazione Lago di Bolsena. In the last few years the Association has been committed to encouraging improvements to the sewer network, whose disastrous state is the principle cause of the eutrophication of the lake that risks irreversible damage to its health.
Piero Bruni organised, along with other environmentalists, the popular ‘Save the Lake’ petition which was signed by more than 13,000 citizens. In 2013 he petitioned the European Union to encourage its intervention in protecting the lake and he was accepted for 3 hearings (the latest on 21 March 2018), where he found the support of the European Commission.
Bruni continues, with an increasing number of colleagues, the monitoring of the lake. Recently he has improved educational work in schools through the ‘Knowing Lake Bolsena’ project that involves secondary students from 12 municipalities in the area. He is personally involved with numerous conferences and publications.
