Emilia-Romagna all concrete:the strategic environmental assessment was cancelled

With a twist in the middle of summer, the regional council of Emilia-Romagna approved a resolution that removes competence from the regional environmental agency (ARPAE), a technical and independent body which will in fact no longer be able to express its opinion on strategic environmental assessments of municipal urban planning plans.The work of geologists, agronomists or biologists, whose opinion was fundamental in the approval of land transformation interventions, is therefore cancelled.A decision that winks at indiscriminate overbuilding and land consumption, traits now typical of postmodern cities as well as complicit in environmental disasters, such asflood which hit Emilia-Romagna in May.An event that did not deter the majority led by president Stefano Bonaccini from making a decision destined to be talked about, opting for a resolution that allowed it to bypass the legislative process of the Regional Council.

As written by Paolo Pileri, professor of territorial planning at the Polytechnic of Milan, on Other economics, the resolution of the Bonaccini council «wanted with his own hands to demolish other embankments, the only ones left to stand between the reasons of nature and the soil and the claws of concrete:that is, those of strategic environmental assessment".Italia Nostra, an association for the protection of cultural, artistic and natural heritage, wrote a letter to the president Stefano Bonaccini inviting him to cancel the resolution launched on August 7, in the middle of summer, when the grip of public opinion tends to loosen.The act of the regional government sweeps away the provisions of regional law 24/2017, which provides for the acquisition, by the body that intends to create an urban plan, of the opinion of the ARPAE.The regional environmental agency, which is enriched by the opinion of experts such as agronomists, biologists or geologists, expresses its opinion on the environmental sustainability of the project, correcting it (or rejecting it) if necessary.

The resolution states that “in the procedures for approving municipal urban plans and their variations activated pursuant to L.R.n.24/2017, the prior investigation by ARPAE for the purposes of issuing the reasoned opinion of Valsat by the Metropolitan City of Bologna and the Provinces is not due".The evaluations relating to environmental sustainability territorial transformation projects will therefore remain the prerogative of smaller bodies which, as Paolo Pileri underlines, «have less ecological-environmental "expertise" than Arpae's technicians and, we all know, are tired by a process of administrative weakening after the unfortunate reform of the Renzi government".

The decision of the Bonaccini council comes a few months after the flood that devastated Emilia-Romagna, an event favored among other things precisely by wild consumption of land practiced in Italy.Concreting, in fact, waterproofs surfaces, which interrupts the recharge of aquifers as well as encouraging flooding.According to ISPRA data, in 2021 the average was 19 hectares of soil lost per day, i.e. the highest value of the last 10 years.There are 21,500 km² of concreted soil throughout the country and buildings alone occupy an area equal to Liguria (5,400 km²).

[by Salvatore Toscano]