AGI – Among the various protest fronts against the construction of the Milan stadium in San Donato, the one led by the WWF is heating up, ready to go to court to defend the San Francesco area where the stadium should be built. Provided, in the meantime, the project to renovate San Siro presented yesterday by Webuild does not take off. It is “a wetland, that is, a pond in which there is non-current water of not very deep depth, 700 meters long by 40 meters wide – Giorgio Bianchini of the WWF Martesana Sud describes it to AGI – and is home to a great biodiversity which we have been taking care of for a long time. We found aquatic birds such as the night heron, the gray heron, the mallards, the moorhens, the coot, the buzzard. There are also foxes and hedgehogs and is surrounded by wooded areas. There are few areas with these characteristics in the metropolitan area.” The concern, he says, increased when press reports revealed that in recent days the reclamation operations by the Sportlifecity company acquired by the Rossoneri club would begin.
“We have been following the area since it became buildable, i.e. since the 1990s, and we have always presented our observations on the building plans that have been presented. There was also an interest from Inter about ten years ago. Concerned by what was reported in the media, we sent a message warns the company asking for the intervention of the Prefecture to stop the works based on the expertise of a professional agronomist. The Prefecture replied that it had no jurisdiction on the matter.”
On Monday, Bianchini announces, again through the Dini-Saltamacchia law firm, “we will present to the competent bodies, including the Municipality and the Region, the request to recognize the area as a wooded area pursuant to a 2004 law and subject to ‘forestry restrictions’ ‘ as established by a regional law of 2008 and then by a decree law. If they don’t respond, we are ready to turn to the judges.”
Italy ratified the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands in 1971, committing itself to protecting them. However, the recognition of the forest restriction, if it were to occur, would not entail a halt to the new stadium. “In any case, it would not be possible to build tout court but actions would have to be implemented, even of environmental compensation, to mitigate damage to the environment”. “But we want to save the area” Bianchini insists, highlighting another aspect that does not convince the WWF. “The whole space is fenced but the wetland is owned by the Milan-Cremona-Po Canal Navigable Consortium and it is not clear why it was fenced off”.
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