The Darsena Europa project – which will expand the port area – received the green light from the Commission on environmental impact assessment last December regarding the first 450 million euro lot which will include the construction of an infrastructure to expand the port with 3 kilometers of docks, millions of cubic meters of new areas, 2 terminals and seabeds dug up to 20 meters from the current 6 to allow the entry of gigantic ships over 300 metres. Livorno is close to the ports of Genoa and La Spezia.
“Compared to these two ports – explains Giacomo Pupi, port worker and RSU in charge of USB – Livorno has no storage problems. Here, for example, we land 40 percent of the European traffic of Citroen, Opel and Peugeot. Creating a terminal that allows large ships and containers to disembark directly here is tempting. The Darsena Europa is designed as an outlet to the sea for container ships, currently operated by the Lorenzini and Toscana terminals. The purchase of the latter by the shipowner Grimaldi, an entity that does not have containers among its first works, could lead to a change. And this worries us.”
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The nearby municipality of Pisa and the Pisan section of Legambiente are against the work. “The commission – specifies Roberto Sirtori of the Pisan association – is responsible for evaluating the ‘first phase’ of the work, the construction of the port structures. It does not evaluate the consequences of the expected traffic and subordinates the positive opinion to the proponent’s commitment to find solutions if the forecasts prove to be inaccurate and the situation more critical.
That is: favorable opinion and authorization are given even if it could cause unexpected and serious damage. And in this case we are asked to find a remedy after the fact. We are close to protected areas such as Meloria or the Cetacean Sanctuary, erosion of the beaches, damage to the posidonia, a protected species, and the greater presence of container ships and cruise ships are conceivable, will worsen the air quality of the area, already suffering from the presence of industrial plants”.
