Brescia:the population mobilizes to save White Lake

Work has begun on laying the pipes to pump water from Lake Bianco in the Brescia area turn it into artificial snow.The ski resorts of Santa Caterina Valfurva and surrounding areas will benefit from the controversial work and, like many others, are suffering the impacts of global warming.However, in the current climate and environmental context, resorting to artificial snow appears absurd, and it is no coincidence that it was soon denounced by environmentalist associations.Lake Bianco, among other things, it is located in a state nature reserve where there is the only example of arctic tundra in Italy.The associations active in the area have thus sent a warning to the institutions contesting various offenses in the works, such as excavation methods that could contaminate the water that flows downstream.However, the risk of defacing a body of water located within a National Park should be enough to stop the interventions.Indeed, this circumstance should not even have made them leave.

Lake Bianco is a natural basin, at 2,652 meters above sea level, located in the Stelvio National Park and within the Tresero-Dosso del Vallon State Nature Reserve.Already in the 1990s the water body was finished in the sights of artificial snow projects.Even then the green light was given to lay several kilometers of pipes, but then the work stopped.In 2016 the Santa Caterina Impianti Company, which already took water from the Gavia, Frodolfo and Alpe streams, however officially obtained the permits to also extract from Lago Bianco.Thus, three years ago, the Municipality of Bormio granted the definitive authorization necessary to complete the pipe laying work begun last century.Today, the landscape of Lake Bianco it is already disfigured by a huge crater and various drills.Unless there are particular obstacles, water will soon be pumped out in a blind attempt to ensure the season for a sector destined to have a short life.

However, the too many contradictions have not gone unnoticed, so much so that various environmental associations and civil society they immediately opposed the works.In 2020, the committee was created Let's save Lake Bianco, who now - together with the CAI Lombardia, the Mountain Wilderness Italia association, the Civic Environment Committee of Merate and the Implementation of the Constitution Committee - has presented an official warning to the institutions.With 46 pages of document - addressed to the Municipalities of Valfurva and Bormio, the Stelvio Park, the Province of Sondrio, the Lombardy Region and the Ministry of the Environment - they ask for an immediate stop to the works in light of various environmental, administrative and procedural offences in the realization of the work.For example, according to the associations, the construction site would have spread over larger surfaces than planned and the works would not have received an impact assessment.

The path taken essentially aims to mitigate a sometimes irreversible emergency with a false solution with a high impact in terms of water and energy consumption.And, among other things, of dubious effectiveness:now in winter, often, it's too hot even for artificial snow.In the case of Lake Bianco there is the further aggravating factor of the disfigurement of precious and protected ecosystems.In general - as Marco Bussone, President of the National Union of Mountain Municipalities, underlined last winter - «it is necessary to open a reflection on the future of skiing and in particular of artificial snow in the light of climate change, we must understand with scientists and experts climatology how much it makes sense to invest economic resources, state and regional, in artificial snow or in new ski lifts below certain altitudes, in certain valleys".In fact, the question to ask in these circumstances should be only one: Can artificial snow be an answer worth more than a patch? Obviously not.While on the one hand it is incontrovertible that the lack of snow is causing direct damage to the winter tourism sector, on the other, it is equally true that stopping the emergency only generates further impacts and represents exclusively a waste of resources.

[by Simone Valeri]