The governor of Veneto Luca Zaia wants “a Marshall plan against floods”. This is why he returns to talk about the national policy against hydrogeological risk. In an interview with Corriere della Sera the president explains that “it is better to spend a billion on prevention rather than two, or who knows how many, to repair the damage”. And he adds how the idea for the Marshall plan came to him: «I called some experts and a 2.7 billion plan came up, which we didn’t have. But step by step… 2,400 construction sites open and 23 large rolling basins, the vast majority of which are already functioning”. According to Zaia «the result is that, despite the rains of the last few days, Vicenza has not ended up under water like then. We averted devastation. Bear in mind that it was a deluge, even 400 mm of water concentrated in a few hours. A real flood.”
The Veneto model
This is why the governor proposes the Veneto model for the whole of Italy: «There are basins and we need to put back in place the embankments, historically made with poor materials and now reduced to gruyere of holes dug by badgers and otters. In Veneto we have 10 thousand km of embankments, a quarter of the earth’s circumference. We have a billion works ready, but we don’t have the money.” And then he has another idea: «A policy. It would be useful to set up a mutual catastrophe policy for everyone at a national level. Insurance at controlled prices that can encourage citizens to secure themselves. It would allow us to say: “Italy is 100% safe”. Even for the Veneto, which does not have total security: «The Piave, for example, is an important river that worries us. We would be ready with a mega project already financed. Reminding us that these are issues that cannot be joked about: in 1966 the flood of the Piave caused one hundred deaths.”
