LUCCA. No step back. The ditch is a drainage ditch and should not have been covered. Translated: the fine must be paid.
The Municipality’s position is clear in the case of the entrepreneur fined 871 euros after having commissioned the filling of a ditch adjacent to the entrance to his company in via Martini. An intervention decided after one of his workers fell while he was fixing the entrance gate on the square.
“Common sense”
“I thought I was doing something common sense and useful for everyone by making the area safe,” he reiterated yesterday afternoon Francesco Gargani to the correspondent of the Raiuno program “La Vita in diretta” after explaining his reasons on Saturday at the Tirreno. A case in which entrepreneurial concreteness due to necessity and timing clashes with procedures. Gargani confirms his appeal to the prefect to request the annulment of the sanction. And he says he is convinced of the correctness of his decision.
From Palazzo Orsetti the story is told from the point of view of those who must follow the rules.
«No authorization»
«The Municipality had not authorized in any way the transfer of materials and earth into the ditch and the owner of the company never made a request in this sense – underlines the organization -. Furthermore, the ditch is used for the collection and disposal of rainwater, as can also be deduced from the fact that in correspondence with it there is a concrete pipe under the crossing of the access road to the company”.
The violation of the highway code was ascertained after an inspection by municipal officials, following the report of the area assistant and a citizen.
The reporting
The administration does not question Gargani’s good faith, but underlines two aspects.
«First of all, it is not a hole for excavations carried out on underground services, but a drainage ditch, which therefore serves to drain rainwater which we are all well aware of the damage it can cause, especially in the event of torrential rains which are now increasingly the norm, even in our territory – continues Palazzo Orsetti –. If the citizen had encountered safety problems relating to the dimple, he had to immediately report them to the Municipality, through the normal communication channels: the Public Relations office, the municipal police itself. And obviously the Municipality would have carried out all the necessary checks and would have responded to the citizen.”
Everyone’s soil
What the administration wants to reiterate in the matter is that «if the principle that individuals can intervene arbitrarily on public land, even animated by the best common sense and good will, passes, each of us, potentially, can cover water drainage ditches, or leveling land, cutting plants and more. It is clear that it is not possible and the Municipality is not “bad” when it intervenes, but simply reaffirms a principle: that public land belongs to everyone and therefore to no one more than others.”
The sanction ultimately remains and only the prefect can now cancel or confirm it.l
