SULMONA (AQ) – “In the meeting of the Sulmona municipal council on 31 May, the urban planning councilor Sergio Berardi read a note in which it was stated that the illegal shack already existing in via Tratturo – and in place of which construction of a private residential building was underway – was later condoned. The question is: are these the documents that certify the amnesty?
We don’t know if Mayor Gianfranco Di Piero and councilor Sergio Berardi have read the papers. Maybe not, to avoid running the risk – as the Mayor declared – of “undue interference in the sphere of competences which are the exclusive prerogative of the administrative offices of the institution”.
We, however, have read them and from the documentation existing at the municipal offices it appears that that “amnesty” was granted on the basis of a provision canceled by the Ministry for Cultural and Environmental Heritage”. Thus the citizen committees for the environment of Sulmona.
“These are the facts: On 14 December 1994, the Municipality of Sulmona, in the person of the Mayor pro tempore, issued the amnesty concession for the shack in question, consisting – as certified by the owner – of a ‘wooden load-bearing structure, closed with wooden planking and covered with onduline-type asbestos-cement sheets” and used as a “storage and shelter for goods and construction equipment”.
The amnesty concession is based, we read in the deed, on the “amnesty clearance” issued by the Abruzzo Regional Council on 13 June 1991.
But the Municipality does not take into account the fact that the Region’s authorization has, in the meantime, been canceled by the Ministry for Cultural and Environmental Heritage with its own Ministerial Decree dated 22 August 1991. In the cancellation Decree the Ministry writes that the authorization of the Abruzzo Region was canceled because ‘the area affected by the interventions covered by the measures falls within an area subject to landscape restrictions pursuant to Law no. 431/1985’.
The Ministry also specifies that the annulment decree was adopted due to ‘the need not to modify the traditional characteristics of the area concerned represented by the view of the river course from the adjacent route and of the other artefacts located nearby, which would be altered with the realization of the solution presented both due to the location and the height and the construction system of the work as indicated in the document.
Mayor Di Piero and councilor Berardi can explain to the citizens, perhaps after reading the papers, how it is possible to consider “condoned” an illegal shack whose fundamental act, assumed as the basis of the ‘amnesty’, was canceled by Decree of Ministry of Cultural and Environmental Heritage?”, conclude the citizen committees for the environment.
