Stealing water from the Sesia river to make snow on a ski slope:the crazy project of Piedmont

It is decided:in Piedmont water will be taken from the Sesia river and then pumped upstream to generate artificial snow for mass skiing.A project that it is not risky to define as crazy, especially considering that the Sesia is among the first waterways to have suffered the consequences of a drought that now chronically grips the North.The water from the ailing river, among other things, will also have to serve a stretch of slopes located just 707 meters above sea level, where snow is scarce regardless, let alone in the current context of global warming.All this will happen thanks to a new project nearing completion and financed by the Piedmont Region for 2.5 million euros.The same council, and the related municipalities, which in February 2023 imposed limits on water consumption on their citizens due to a water shortage which caused the Sesia to lose 80% of its capacity.Nonetheless, full speed ahead.«The ongoing intervention – announced the company that manages the plants involved in the project – mainly consists of the collection of water from the Sesia river, which flows adjacent to the start of the perching plant, in order to feed the open-air reservoir present in the station and the current programmed snowmaking system of the ski slopes above, making it more efficient in conjunction with this construction.The work is completed and will enter into operation with the start of the current winter season."

In particular, the Alpe di Mera-Scopello district, in the province of Vercelli, will benefit from the debated project.The management of the systems is headed by Monterosa2000 company, the same one that signed the agreement with the Piedmont Region for the construction of the new artificial snow system.A plant which, in more detail, will extract water from the Sesia river near the historic Pila bridge, transport it to the pumping station and then make it rise along the Pianaccia slope to the storage basin.The installed sampling system, equipped with three submersible pumps, is capable of withdrawing 400 m³/hour from the river, that is, 400 thousand liters of water per hour.At this point it should not be surprising that the ski area in question has fully entered the relationship Neve Diversa by the environmentalist association Legambiente.In particular, the Valsesia area was included by the Green Swan in the section of "facilities subjected to therapeutic fury".In other words, among all those plants which for structural and historical reasons are no longer able to cope with the changed climatic conditions except with constant monetary investments (or rather waste).

According to one study conducted on one of the largest ski areas in Switzerland, in the short term, «the use of artificial snow can effectively guarantee a 100-day ski season, at least in the highest parts of the area (above 1,800 metres), but in ski areas at At lower altitudes, temperatures will be too high and the air will be too humid for technical snow formation in the coming decades."So the cannons can't do much.And, in any case, in the long term, even new snow guns could only alleviate the situation to some extent, but they will not completely solve the problem.For this, however, there is a price to pay:according to the researchers' calculations, in the worst case scenario, "water consumption for artificial snow will increase significantly, by around 80% only for the area in question as a whole".Disproportionate water waste combined with staggering energy consumption.To put it simply, artificial snow not only will not be able to forever buffer the effects of the climate crisis, but it also consists of a paradoxical choice with highly risky retaliations, especially for the very sector it is trying to save.Returning to the Sesia, as anticipated, at the beginning of February it had 80% less water and flowed in a context that had dried up to the point that tankers proved necessary to supply the Alta Valsesia and some hamlets of Valduggia and Quarona.Now, as if nothing had happened, the water from that same river will therefore be uselessly wasted in an attempt to prolong the life of a sector now irreversibly marked by the effects of global warming.If nothing else, in at least one other case similarly, reason prevailed.

[by Simone Valeri]