This time, 200 olive trees are blocking the progress of the gas pipeline Tap (Trans Adriatic Pipeline), a strategic project for the import of 10 billion cubic meters (when fully operational) of gas from Azerbaijan: 870 kilometers of pipes crossing Turkey, Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea at Melendugno, a small town in Salento, near Lecce, with 9.924 inhabitants. Manned construction site, activists sitting on the ground, mayors with tricolor bands riding the protest of their fellow citizens, No Tap committee to denounce the illegitimacy of the authorization process: an uprising prevented it on Tuesday 21 March the passage of trucks and bulldozers that were supposed to explant, and then replant them once the work was completed, 201 olive trees, 16 of which of monumental value. The governor Michele Emiliano, in the middle of the tussle, reaffirms "the illegitimacy of moving the olive trees" and the prefect, after two hours of suspension of the works, throws in the towel: bulldozers and trucks turn around. Until? On March 27, the sentence of the Council of State which rejected the appeals presented by the Puglia Region and the small Salento municipality, unlocked the tug of war. The works can therefore restart and the prefect has authorized Tap to do so but the mayor Potì does not give up and declares that he wants to continue the "battle".
It's a pity that the temporary removal of the olive trees is perfectly legitimate and authorised, lo and behold, precisely from the Puglia Region governed by the corpulent Emiliano as demonstrated by the document (attached here) with which the Department of Agriculture, rural and environmental development of Lecce had given the go-ahead, no later than 9 March 2017, to the "extirpation of 215 olive trees and 4 olive trees positive for Xylella as it operates (the Tap, ed) considered strategic at community level and declared of public utility with Mise decree". Uprooting the plants before April 30 is necessary precisely to preserve them, respecting the vegetative cycle, and then be able to replant them in the area once the gas pipe (underground and not visible on the coast) is completed.
The "battle of the olive trees" is only the latest in an endless series of beams and grains, more or less voluminous, inserted into the authorization mechanisms of the large infrastructures, subjected to complex and fragmented bureaucratic procedures: a scourge which, leaving veto power even to the tiniest local authorities and to local pressures, holds the rights of the national community hostage, does not serve to improve the works but only to delay them with a monstrous increase in costs which inevitably then they unload on us all. The Renzi government's attempt to restore the State's powers over strategic infrastructures by removing them from local authorities failed with the rejection of the constitutional reform on 4 December last year.
The result is that the longer the work is, and therefore crosses multiple local administrations, the more the vetoes add up: once one obstacle is overcome, another one immediately arises a few kilometers further on because the Municipality changes and the last one demands greater compensation than the previous one, in a crescendo that moves the bar higher and higher. It was so for the Rovigo regasification terminal (Adriatic Lng: Edison feasibility study in 1997, completed in 2009) which then cost 2 billion against the initial estimate of 400-600 million; to realize the Matera-Santa Sofia power line Terna took 15 years thanks, in large part, to the village of Rapolla which blocked the completion of the last kilometers on a total route of over 280. And it was so for Pylon 45 of the Sorgente-Rizziconi power line, between Calabria and Sicily, a work long hampered and finally inaugurated in 2016, capable of saving 600 million a year on national electricity bills as it has managed to eliminate the bottleneck on which local producers have long thrived. A pole, technologically advanced but still a pole, to which the opponents clung to the last moment and now seem to have evaporated. The power lines mentioned are working, as is the Rovigo regasification terminal; in Rapolla children continue to be born and bills, as well as the environment, benefit from modern works that are useful to the community.
(updated March 28)
Attachments: Tap Authorization Puglia Region
