Belluno:the associations win in court and stop speculation in Comelico

Accepting the appeal advanced by the environmentalist associations Italia Nostra, Mountain Wilderness Italia and Lipu against a sentence pronounced by the Veneto Regional Administrative Court, the Council of State has restored the landscape restrictions on the Municipalities of Comelico and Auronzo (Belluno) placed in 2019 by a decree of the Ministry of the Environment.The administrative judges have therefore established that speculative projects cannot be started in a vast area of ​​the Dolomite Park, a UNESCO heritage site, which constitutes one of the most important portions of our country from a landscape point of view.In this way, the construction of ski lifts and a ski connection between Comelico and Pusteria which had previously obtained the green light was officially called into question.

In 2022, the TAR had agreed with the municipalities of Auronzo, Comelico Superiore, Santo Stefano di Cadore, the Province of Belluno and the Veneto Region - supported by Confindustria Belluno, Confartigianato Belluno and the Autonomous Province of Bolzano -, who had opposed the established landscape restrictions by the Ministry.The department of via Cristoforo Colombo, according to the TAR, would in fact have intervened in a matter falling within the competence of local authorities, without having carried out an appropriate investigation, thus abusing its authority.The Council of State has instead moved in the same and opposite direction, certifying that the constraint outlined by the Ministry, differently from what was reconstructed by the TAR, "is accompanied by a adequate and congruous investigation", which also made use of the results of "several inspections" carried out by the officials in charge "including through helicopter overflights", through which "it was possible to view the peculiarities that distinguish the landscape, verifying the architectural and urban quality of existing buildings".From these elements, wrote the Council of State, it is possible to "deduce the existence of the conditions for the validity and merit of the declaration of notable public interest of the area in question".Analyzing the issue on a legal level, the administrative judges write that the Ministry has "exercised a power within his competence in a relevant manner", also based on a ruling of the Constitutional Court, which in 2021 had established that, "in terms of constitutional competences relating to landscape assets", environmental and landscape protection, "burdening on a complex and unitary asset, considered by constitutional jurisprudence a primary and absolute value, and returning within the exclusive jurisdiction of the State, precedes and in any case constitutes a limit to the protection of other public interests assigned to the concurrent competence of the Regions in matters of territorial governance and valorisation of cultural and environmental assets", thus "being faced with two types of different public interests:that of landscape conservation, entrusted to the State, and that of the use of the territory, also entrusted to the Regions".

Italia Nostra, Mountain Wilderness and LIPU rejoice, speaking of a sentence «intended to making history in the defense of natural landscapes».This news confirms that, even through legal action, it may be possible for citizens to help stop speculative projects.If the result was achieved in Comelico, however, not far away are progressing - apparently unstoppable - those in view of the 2026 Olympics.In fact, at the end of February, work began in Cortina d'Ampezzo for the construction of the new flat bobsleigh track for the Olympic competitions, taken over by the Pizzarotti company of Parma.Despite the very high costs, the protests of environmental groups, the presentation of a much more practical and sustainable alternative and the negative opinion of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the chainsaws were turned on in order to fell 500 centuries-old larches for the construction of the runway.In a few days, approximately 1,200 cubic meters of trees were cut down (only one hundred cubic meters less than all the trees felled in Cortina from 2009 to 2020).Last week, the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini has announced “the start with ice on the track” already “in the first week of July”.

[by Stefano Baudino]