Trento Faces Legal Hurdles Over Tunnel Spoil Disposal Compared to Lombardy
Hear, hear: for once, the efficient Provincia autonoma di Trento has become hostage to the laws it itself enacted, and has been beaten to the punch by Lombardia, a region with an ordinary statute, and by the province of Brescia.
Construction work on the new tunnel connecting the towns of Riva and Limone has been underway for over a week. The excavation, which is expected to allow partial vehicle circulation starting next July, will produce approximately 90,000 cubic meters of spoil, which obviously needs to be disposed of.
Lombardia quickly granted permission to discharge the residues directly into the lake, on the Brescia side of the excavation, while the Trentino authorities are still dealing with bureaucratic complications.
Provincial legislation and management of spoil
A provincial law enacted by Trento states that when more than 20,000 cubic meters of material are disposed of at any site, that site must automatically be considered a landfill.
Moreover, all landfills must be strictly included in the relevant provincial plan. However, the landfill plan did not identify a location for dumping the material from the Trentino side of the tunnel: the project, it should be remembered, envisages using such material to expand the D’Annunzio lakeside promenade in Riva.
In the original plan presented by the Comune di Riva, the spoil was supposed to be used to extend and lengthen the walkway running parallel to the western Gardesana. However, due to bureaucratic complications, Riva had to revise its approach; it submitted a second project to Trento, which only involves extending the D’Annunzio lakeside promenade by a few dozen meters and discharging less than 20,000 cubic meters of spoil into the lake.
This is a tactic to buy some time and find a valid solution to legal complications.
Transport operations and debris management
Meanwhile, construction of the new tunnel has commenced, and the contractor has proactively obtained permission from the Riva town administration to allow its trucks to transit through the town center, should it be necessary to transport the debris elsewhere.
Approximately 90,000 cubic meters of crushed rock, produced by tunnel boring machines working 24 hours a day for 120 consecutive days—that is, until July—will emerge from the mountain’s bowels.
This material, roughly evenly split between the Lombard and Trentino sides of the excavation, must be loaded onto trucks, which have already begun shuttling day and night between the construction site and the disposal zones.
The hope is that this bureaucratic obstacle will be resolved promptly and will not impact the project timeline, allowing traffic on the Riva-Limone route to resume as already assured, starting in July.