From controlled overflows to the indication of areas where building will be prohibited. With a single objective, that what happened almost a year ago in Emilia-Romagna never happens again, the great flood, the water like a dark sea in the squares and houses, families fleeing, mud angels. It is a special plan, it indicates the lines for post-flood interventions, a plan which made use of the technical contribution of the Po-Mite River District Authority, general secretary Alessandro Bratti. It is he who explains the key points of what can be defined as an anti-flood manual created hand in hand with the Region.
What was your role in what can be defined as post-flood reconstruction?
“The technical-scientific coordination – specifies Bratti – was done by us, who moved shoulder to shoulder with the Region, under the aegis of the commissioner structure of General Francesco Figliuolo. The ordinance provided for a series of areas of intervention for the post-flood, one was the hydrogeological management plan. In practice, the mother area of all the interventions that we coordinated by activating a team which also includes the universities.”
A very substantial document. Let’s clarify. The urban planning moratorium
“It is crucial, a decree has been made that prohibits building in some areas for at least three years. These are the areas identified by the Civil Protection and indicated on a map as flooded areas”
Controlled overflow, what is it?
“It is an operation agreed with the farmers who will receive compensation for this very reason. Some areas are flooded to prevent the water from flooding cities, squares and houses”
The banks? These too ended up in the dock
“In some areas they will be widened, among the interventions will also be the cleaning of the riverbeds to avoid vegetation and debris that could act as a plug. Hence the flooding”
What will you do about the houses located in risk areas?
“It’s called delocalisation, it refers to both floods and landslides. We have verified that it is more convenient to give financing to the owners of the structures so that they go and build elsewhere than to intervene on a landslide with a cost in some cases of close to a million euros”
Not just bricks
“No, with Ispra we also dealt with fauna. Particularly with otters and porcupines. They can make tunnels, canals that jeopardize the banks, which can cause a further hydraulic risk. We will carry out a containment study which will start from a mapping of the population of these animals, once monitoring has been achieved, we will intervene where they are most numerous”
The first coordination between Mab UNESCO reserves was born along the Po river, what is it for?
“It is a confederation that unites five territories, from Monviso to the Po Delta. It is one of the largest UNESCO biospheres in the world. It has more than eighty municipalities and the cities of Ferrara, Bondeno and Riva del Po are about to join. Which will be able to access financing to create sustainable agriculture, river tourism, green mobility. The main objective through this path is to repopulate the coastal municipalities, make them attractive again, create reasons and opportunities to slow down the escape of the population”.
