Because the Strait Bridge is a bankruptcy project for the environment

It is bankruptcy to focus on a work with very high and unsustainable environmental, social and economic-financial costs, such as the bridge over the Strait of Messina.

The Government believes that the road is paved but the General Contractor Eurolink (headed by Webuild) who designed the single span suspension bridge with double road and railway deck, which it wants to relaunch, has never produced the technical and economic-financial insights on the final project drawn up in 2010 for the work, requested at the time by the Monti Government in 2013, nor has the project ever passed the final phase of environmental impact assessment.

An economically unsustainable work

The WWF also recalls that in the face of the onerous prudential cost of the work of 8.5 billion euros (2010 estimate) project financing was excluded in 2021 by the working group appointed by the then infrastructure minister Giovannini because it appears evident that the brevity of the crossing route and the related connected works does not allow us to predict a number of tolls to be paid by users capable of allowing for a project financing operation: on the other hand, those who move between the two shores every day do not there are more than 4,500 people and 76.2% of passenger journeys are local and without cars. This means that the construction of such an expensive work both in the construction phase and when fully operational is entirely the responsibility of the public finances.

The environmental criticalities

The WWF then recalls that from an environmental point of view the whole area of ​​the Strait of Messina is substantially included in two very important Special Protection Areas – SPAs (on the Calabrian side the SPA of the Costa Viola and on the Sicilian side the SPA of the Peloritani Mountains, Dorsale Curcuraci, Antenna a Mare and the marine area of ​​the Strait) and by a system of no less than 11 ZSC (Special Conservation Areas), pursuant to the EU Habitats Directive, which protect a unique environment that goes from the fragile Calabrian coast to the important wetland of the Lagoon of Capo Peloro, to the precious botanical ecosystem of the Peloritani Mountains. In 2013, the Ministry’s EIA Commission gave a negative impact assessment opinion on the final design of the single span bridge of 2010 precisely to protect the Strait of Messina, a very important place of transit for birdlife and marine mammals, there is a concentration of the highest concentrations of biodiversity in the world.