Lake Garda Pier Controversy: Costly Underperformance and Poor Planning
“Subjugation of the province to Navigarda’s ‘overreach’? Lack of experience among those in the Province dealing with Lake Garda? Ignorance of the real issues related to boat traffic and passenger vessels?
Perhaps all of this is behind the launch of the large and very expensive pier that, after being assembled in the Rocca canal, in recent days is about to be moored next to the quay just north of the ‘Casa Rossa’.
Construction work, both above and below water, further inflates the roughly half-billion spent on the purchase of that pier from Walcom. And listen carefully, it is not intended to facilitate passenger boarding, but solely and exclusively to keep moored, during nighttime hours, the speedboat, the motor ship, and the out-of-service ferry.
Problems and costs of the pier
Anyone who has, even briefly, frequented various Italian ports knows that where ships dock, far larger than those of Navigarda, there are no expensive Walcom piers moored on quaysides, which only have rubber bumpers placed between the solid concrete and the ship’s hull.
Huge, with a volume of a couple of cubic meters each, but rubber bumpers, not costly piers, which Navigarda “identified” and therefore demanded from our province. The officials, evidently having never seen a serious port, immediately agreed to the navigation company’s demands.
It is said that Navigarda insisted on that solution because a floating pier would solve the problem related to lake level fluctuations. However, it is known that Lake Garda has never experienced tides twice daily like the sea, and that any level fluctuations have never reached those of the Adriatic or Tyrrhenian seas.
If that were the case, it would have been enough to “submerge” the vertical piles, identical to those used for the pier (which, with this solution, would not be legally feasible), at a significantly lower cost than all that equipment, with zero environmental impact (which no one has assessed).
In short, many believe that hundreds of millions have been spent unnecessarily. Actually, they have been thrown into the lake!
