Puglia is confirmed first in Italy, for the second consecutive year, for bathing water quality (99 percent excellent), followed by Sardinia (97.6 percent) and Tuscany (96 percent). This is what emerges from the control and monitoring work conducted by the National System for Environmental Protection, the network that coordinates the various regional environmental agencies in the country including Arpa Puglia.

''Every year, bathing waters undergo periodic checks to ensure the health of bathers,'' explains Vito Bruno, director general of Arpa Puglia. ''We are pleased to note that Puglia is first in Italy again this year for the quality of bathing waters. Not only that. It is also first for the number of samples analyzed in the laboratory (4056), and second only for the number of points monitored (676), after Sicily, which enjoys a much more extensive coastline.''

Along the approximately 1,000 km of Apulian coastline, the region has identified, under the current reference legislation, as many as 676 "waters" (i.e., zones) designated for bathing that correspond to a linear total of approximately 800 km: in particular, 254 bathing waters have been identified in the province of Foggia, 46 in the province of Bat (Barletta- Andria-Trani), 78 in the province of Bari, 88 in the province of Brindisi, 139 in the province of Lecce and 71 in the province of Taranto.

At the national level, again this year there are many regions where more than 90 percent of waters are in the excellent class; adding up even the good ones brings the figure up to 94 percent. Bathing water controls also cover lakes and (in a few cases) rivers, where some regions reach 100 percent excellent water.