ABSTRACT
Avolio De Martino started his professorship as an agricultural engineer and eventually became interested in sanitary engineering, once his predecessor Girolamo Ippolito (1891-1975) had retired. In the 1950s, Avolio De Martino contributed to the design and the construction of irrigation schemes in Southern Italy, where water is vital for these purposes. Despite the mountainous landscape, there are several large plains in the Campania Province, which have contributed to the reputation of agricultural products actually known all over Europe. From the early 1960s, Avolio De Martino supported the urgent calls for a better sanitation of Southern Italy, mainly ‘his city’ Naples with almost 2 millions of inhabitants. As with other cities of Italy, there was lots of technical support but the final results were often diluted by political decisions. Even today, important cities of this country have no modern wastewater plants and problems were so far small mainly because of the long Italian coastline in which a natural wastewater dilution is still active. However, the Gulf of Naples as an important portion of the city and the region needs urgent rehabilitation, based on projects such as those presented by Avolio De Martino decades ago.
