Lungolago Project Advances Amid Bureaucratic Delays and Permitting Issues

The head of the roads department of the province, engineer De Col, visited Riva yesterday morning to finalize the details ahead of the start of construction works for the tunnel to Sperone, scheduled for Monday morning.

The construction office is located at Casa Rossa, in the old disused cantoniera (they had to quickly connect to the sewer system and the natural gas network); the workers will be accommodated in the Excelsior hotel “requited” until July; the reconstruction of the old 45 bis embankment, torn apart by the landslide, has been completed.

Lungolago Project and Authorization Issues

This occasion allowed the regional councilor Matteotti to hand over to the provincial director the second edition of the Lungolago project, which the council intends to build using the excavated material.

There is currently a standoff with the Trentino officials who have yet to formally approve the permit for discharging materials into the lake, which would widen Lungolago D’Annunzio by about ten meters.

Due to the uncertainty about whether the stones will end up in the lake, the company, before starting to dig the tunnel, demanded—and obtained—the permission for trucks to transit through the city center: if they can unload into the lake, all the better.

In any case, they cannot risk not knowing where to dispose of thousands of cubic meters of crushed rock or having their transit banned in the city—trucks heading to Ceole must be able to unload.

The absurdity is that for Limone, there is no problem at all: the Lombardy Region has already authorized dumping of all the material directly into the lake, without even the justification of constructing a shoreline defense work.

The lake remains the same, the rock remains the same: Brescia permits it, Trento raises difficulties, all purely bureaucratic in nature.

Regulations and Restrictions

Indeed, according to provincial regulations (long live autonomy), a pile of material exceeding 20,000 cubic meters must be considered a landfill; however, it cannot be classified as a landfill unless it is included in the provincial landfill plan.

And on Riva’s Lungolago, the plan does not identify any landfill. This is why a temporary reduction of the original project—a widening of the Lungolago from the power plant outlet to Casa Rossa—has been requested.

The request handed to De Col concerns only the final section of Lungolago, from the staircase to Casa Rossa: this avoids classifying it as a landfill and allows several weeks to complete all the paperwork.

The office that complicates simple matters never fails to deliver.