A first, very partial tranche of money arrives for hydrogeological instability. The Minister of the Environment, Sergio Costa, has signed the provision which allocates 315 million euros for executive projects for the protection of the territory. Three months after the decree that started the evaluation of the projects of the Regions, finally a financial stock market has also opened. A first excerpt document, with respect to the enormous resources that the Regions and specialized institutes require to secure Italy, a country that already spends a total of 4 billion a year on emergencies.
The money is to be spent already this year and Costa, in announcing it, acknowledged himself the merit of speeding up the bureaucratic machine. On the other hand, he has just obtained the reorganization of the Ministry by virtue of another decree. The concept of an excerpt provision, obviously, mitigates the criticisms of everything that has been promised to the territories up to now. "We have made a substantial speed-up, if we consider that in past years it took even two years to obtain the same result," said the minister.
Funds, however, are not enough to appease the anxieties of the territories for landslides, mudslides and floods. Very well known situations, which the government had undertaken to resolve, with all the controversy and accusations against "who was there before". In the government contract, the Cinquestelle spoke of "necessary prevention actions involving widespread interventions of ordinary and extraordinary maintenance of the soil on high-risk areas, as well as a necessary implementation of interventions to mitigate hydrogeological risk". We are only starting now with the first appropriations and at the end of the year there are six months left, with hundreds of tenders to launch.
The expenditure was decided together with the emergency commissioners, those for instability and the district basin authorities. The 315 million will be used to finance 263 interventions and will be divided among all the Regions. The money was found in the Environment Operational Plan with European resources 2014-2020.
The Italian risk level is among the highest in Europe, as shown by the periodically updated data from Ispra, the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research. Previous governments had created the mission of “Italia Sicura”. Fortunately, or by opportunity, in the transition from the centre-left governments to the current yellow-green ones, the work of reconnaissance and warning for the most at-risk cases has not been lost. It will have been appreciated for its seriousness, even if the powers of Italia Sicura have been absorbed by the Ministry of the Environment, which has a dossier of 4.751 works to combat instability, 33 anti-emergency construction sites and an infinite number of metropolitan plans.
From the last Ispra report shows that 91% of Municipalities are exposed to risks and that over 3 million households live in highly vulnerable areas, while more than 7 million people live in vulnerable areas. The battle for the environment and land protection is still long.
