The plan to secure the territory following the flood that devastated Romagna a year ago is starting to be discussed. In particular, the relocation projects with which the Emilia-Romagna Region and the commissioner structure want to remove residents from areas at risk due to landslides or excessive proximity to waterways are starting to arouse controversy. Fratelli d’Italia, in Faenza, therefore requested the urgent convening of Council Commission 3 “Environment and Territorial Planning”, in which the participation of the vice-president of the Region Irene Priolo is requested, to discuss directly with the institutions that will deal with the reconstruction strategies for delocalisation and securing the territory:
“In recent days, the declarations of Vice President Priolo on the post-flood and on the Preliminary Special Plan have been made in increasingly massive numbers, declarations released only and exclusively in the press or via social media and outside of any institutional context and with a which at times leads to arrogance” the criticism comes from Stefano Bertozzi, group leader of the Brothers of Italy in the Faenza city council.
In addressing topics with a strong social, environmental and territorial security impact, the Councilor with responsibility for ecological transition and combating climate change, as well as the environment, soil defense and civil protection, intervened – with disarming superficiality – speaking of relocation of businesses and families, of census of buildings in an area of twenty meters (20!) away from landslides, of transfers “where it will be impossible or unsustainable to secure the slope” implying that the non sustainable will be evaluated simply from a cost-benefit perspective.”
“These declarations are based, according to him, in the Special Preliminary Plan, governed by a national law (Ordinance no. 24/2024 of the Extraordinary Commissioner for Reconstruction), drawn up by the Po River District Basin Authority within a working group of which the Region itself and three regional agencies are a determining part, in particular “the Agency for territorial security and civil protection of Emilia-Romagna”, “the regional Agency for prevention, environment and energy of Emilia-Romagna” and “the Emilia-Romagna Territorial Agency for Water and Waste Services”.
The work of the technical group is coordinated and directed by the commissioner structure, but a very interesting element is that the so-called needs frameworks (i.e. the identification of priority areas of intervention and urgency in essence) have been indicated by the law among the tasks of the sub-commissioner to the reconstruction, which incidentally coincides with President Bonaccini, as well as candidate for the European Elections, who should have coordinated with the competent bodies and authorities, in harmony with the territorial planning guidelines, precisely to identify the areas of which said.
Well, how were the “needs frameworks” identified? Through a series of meetings concerning “the main, secondary hilly and mountainous and secondary lowland hydrographic network”, which as regards the rivers of our territory were held and organized by the Regional Territorial Security and Civil Protection Agency in three separate dates: 7 and 13 February for the Senio river, 20 February for the Lamone river. In operational terms, the meetings took place by initially analyzing the PAI currently in force, in a GIS environment, in order to identify the hydraulic criticalities previously detected and the related project structure of the planned watercourse.
In essence, the elusive Special Plan, which according to the declarations of our local administrators seems to have been born from the fervent mind of the Extraordinary Commissioner without any involvement on their part and clearly late compared to all forecasts and needs, is in reality an instrument in which the Region and its Agencies have played a prominent role, which starts from existing planning tools (the PAI) and which, as far as we know, has seen a major absence: the Municipalities and local communities affected by the flood.
The Region is designing the future structure of the territory on the heads of our citizens without the flooded Municipalities being involved, the needs framework was drawn up without the intervention of the Mayors, not even in the consultative phase, or if the Mayors were involved we Councilors would not we were minimally informed, and this would have been extremely serious.
Several questions therefore arise spontaneously: Mayors, were you consulted during the preparation of the preliminary plan? If it didn’t happen, why didn’t you protest vigorously asking for our political support in the name of common interest? If they asked you, why didn’t you report emergency situations such as via Casale, or the right Senio area in the Castel Bolognese-Riolo Terme stretch or the situation of the Marzeno-Lamone confluence?
It is for this reason that I have requested, with the support of all the opposition forces, the urgent convening of an ad hoc Council Commission where Vice President Priolo and the Regional Agency for Territorial Security and Civil Protection are invited. After the gaps, the shortcomings, the lack of interventions of these subjects in the past decade, today the hydraulic and hydrogeological structure of our cities and our suburbs is being redesigned and the Municipalities and citizens involved are left out.
The Region must come and report and the Municipal Administration of Faenza must demand it, we are talking about our future and the security of the territory”.
