Environmental Impact Study or Promessi Sposi? The Real Concerns Over Adige Crossings
“If instead of the Environmental Impact Study a copy of the Promessi Sposi had been submitted (to the Via, Editor’s note), probably no one would have noticed: this is the sad realization based on the judgments given regarding the environmental compatibility of the two crossings over the Adige River proposed by the Municipalized Companies of Rovereto and Verona.”
Judgments and Criticisms of the Project
Who loudly protests against the provincial Via and the Junta, which has adopted the rejection of the project for the construction of new energy sources with an investment of over 170 billion, is Engineer Franco Garzon of the SWG studio that prepared the report for Asm and Agsm to be submitted for environmental impact assessment.
Nothing was gained by developing complex mathematical models of the groundwater basins in the valley floor, based on hundreds of millions spent on surveys and piezometric tests, or models for predicting water quality, as in the judgments expressed by the Provincial Services, by the Environmental Associations, by the Basin Authority, and by the Committee of Experts for the Environment, notes the technical, none of whom ever mentioned these studies. No one conducted in-depth research on similar projects already completed in Italy and abroad, nor read the publications provided in the appendix of the Study, which demonstrated with data that, with certain precautions, the two crossings could be built with minimal environmental disturbance, or even improved in some aspects.
Contrasting Positions and Opinions
“Patience with the judgments of environmentalists,” continues Franco Garzon, “whose positions often blatantly contradict scientific facts and technology; an emblem of this is Minister Ronchi, the ‘Green Minister,’ who rejected the Mose project to save Venice, simply because he didn’t understand how it worked, causing a scandal in the international public opinion.”
But from the Provincial Services and especially from the Committee for the Environment, one expected more scientific analysis, given the importance of the works under review; instead, only the Public Water Services requested a deeper investigation into the study, while all others limited themselves, as mentioned, to a minimal reading of the Non-technical Summary attached to the Study.
Motivations and Future Implications
Probably the real reason, according to engineer Garzon, is that from the Provincial Junta and the public opinion, “the advice came to block the project since Trentino has already contributed significantly to Italy’s hydroelectric production; this needed to be said and written, without bringing up the need for more detailed studies or, worse, hypothesizing possible upheavals in the river and valley floor, as cited by the assessor Pinter without any serious scientific basis.”
For the technician, the fact is that without the two plants on the Adige, in the Rovereto cogeneration plant, millions of cubic meters of methane gas will be burned in the coming decades to produce electricity, to the detriment of environmentalists, whether assessors or not, and with an increase in greenhouse effects and potentially toxic discharges in Vallagarina.
For this reason, the rights holders planning the construction hope that the Ministry of the Environment in Rome, which has the final say on the Environmental Impact Assessment of the two crossings over the Adige, will give more weight to this fact and perhaps undertake a serious investigation into the potential environmental impacts analyzed by the Study, recognizing that they can be built with a overall positive impact on Vallagarina.
Hoping that this idea endures, concludes engineer Garzon, even though today it is unfortunately more fashionable to demolish projects than to implement them properly.”