“EU ready to cover 50% of study costs” – Corriere.it

Brussels ready to cover 50% of the costs for updating the studies on the environmental impact of the Strait Bridge. what is learned from MIT sources which reports the words of the coordinator of the EU Commission for the TEN-T Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor, Pat Cox, present at the ministry for a meeting with the deputy premier and minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini, and the governors Renato Schifani and Roberto Occhiuto. Again according to MIT, Cox would have also proposed a meeting in Brussels, to deepen the dossier also from a technical point of view, after which the coordinator will return to Italy in October.

There is no environmental impact assessment

The Bridge over the Strait of Messina, in fact, in addition to not having the funding at least for this year, also risks being a work with high environmental costs. The Meloni government believes that in reality everything is practically ready to start the process preceding construction, but the General Contractor Eurolink who designed the single span suspension bridge has not produced the technical and economic-financial insights relating to the definitive project of 2010, as had been requested by the Monti government in 2013. Furthermore, the project has never passed the final phase of the evaluation process, precisely that of environmental impact.

Seismic risk: what the latest study says

To all this, then, is added the latest study conducted on the seabed of the Strait of Messina and on the seismo-tectonics of the area, the result of an international collaboration between the Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences of the University of Catania, the Center for Ocean and Society-Institute of Geosciences of the University of Kiel in Germany and the Etna Observatory of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. The scientists involved unveiled in 2021, and for the first time, the location and characteristics of the possible fault from which the devastating earthquake originated which in 1908 caused death and destruction between Sicily and Calabria, causing the greatest seismic disaster of the twentieth century and 120 thousand victims. According to reports (read here to find out more), the fault is capable of triggering earthquakes of magnitude 6.9, an energy therefore very similar to that released during the earthquake of 1908.