“Land consumption and lack of maintenance: this is how our rivers overflow with enormous damage”

We need more simplification, for example in the procedures for cleaning up the riverbeds, more infrastructure, on all the expansion basins, and finally greater cohesion in the management of the territories so that we can think of preventive strategies against the climate crisis and disasters such as those just occurred in Emilia Romagna. Marco Casinienvironmental engineer, general secretary of the central Apennine district basin authority, has been in office for only six months but has very clear ideas on how to act both in terms of preventing the impacts of floods and counteracting the effects of drought .

In the tragedy of Emilia Romagna there are those who point the finger at the climate crisis and those who point the finger at the lack of maintenance and management of the territories. What is his opinion?
“The truth lies somewhere in between: it is clear that the more intense the phenomenon, the more damage and disservices of this kind can be created. Usually these events have very long return times but unfortunately, due to climate change, they are becoming almost “normal” every year. At the same time there is a problem, in Italy, of difficulty in managing the territories, rivers, dams and infrastructures. There is a lack of simplification”.

For example in river management?
“I’m referring to intervention procedures. Removing a dam is complicated. Removing sediments from the river is difficult: when you take them out, they are considered waste. Where do you put them, how do you manage them? Here, for all this we suffer from regulations that make the immediate intervention of ditches, dams and the like is very difficult. Therefore, greater simplification is needed. We are very good at creating rules but which then prevent us from doing things. So it ends up that the problems accumulate and over time it then becomes very complicated to manage them. Actions that should be normal administration become impossible, the problems add up and then the rain arrives, which is now more intense and frequent, and we know what happens”.

Low and animal damaged banks, sediments, vegetation. All “obstacles” that are not discussed enough?
“Let’s say it’s complex. Let’s think about what has happened now: the rain falls copious and finds a very dry ground after the drought and this doesn’t absorb it, it behaves like asphalt. Or if it is very wet, like after the floods in early May , does the same thing: it does not absorb it because it is already saturated. These are all favorable conditions for rivers to overflow. Therefore it is clear that the only possibility is to increase good maintenance, even if it is not certain that the rivers will still be able to withstand the phenomenon. The banks must be able not to collapse, they must be reinforced, but they have structural problems of heights, of animals that wear them out with their burrows. Then there is the problem of sediments that accumulate over time and the riverbed is reduced. Finally, aggravation of this period, the vegetation on the banks: in spring it is luxuriant and creates a brake on the water and the course overflows.All these criticalities are perhaps observed on the primary network, but hardly on the secondary one such as canals, ditches, small courses, which then in seven or eight hours of extreme rain they regurgitate. If we add to all this a gigantic land consumption in Italy, with primacy at European level given that last year we were talking about almost seventy thousand square kilometres, two square meters per second of land consumed, it is obvious that both the water absorption and the possibility of managing them in advance”.

So what would it take?

“Clearly more maintenance but for me what is increasingly lacking in view of more complex and serious weather phenomena are the expansion tanks. Either the river has ancient walls, like in Rome, or you must have free zones where in cases of flooding it is possible to allow the river to overflow in safety. Furthermore, the expansion tanks have a dual function: they also accumulate water to be eventually used in periods of drought”.

Who should manage all this?
“The Regions. Together with the regional reclamation consortia and in agreement with the various municipalities. Please, then if you look at the national, government level, there is a question of funds and policies. But it is the regions as interventions and priorities having to deal with it”.

Even in the Central Apennines which the authority he directs deals with? And by the way: what condition is the Apennines in now?
“We deal with four topics: planning and defense of hydraulic risk, geological risk, landslides, protection of water management and the drought observatory. We deal with planning, indicating priorities and risks which the regions must then follow thanks to to projects and interventions. The Apennines is a fragile, seismic area that needs to be taken care of. Out of a total of 600,000 landslides surveyed in Italy, over 150,000 are in our territory which is about 45,000 square kilometers between parts of Emilia and Tuscany, Lazio , Umbria, Marche, Abruzzo and Molise. We have many rivers where it is necessary to intervene. One above all, for example, is the Misa in the Marches: you have to put your hands on it, it requires maintenance which should be continuous, a factor which becomes more pressing if the conditions weather changes as it is happening”.

At a national level, do you believe that politics is dealing with it properly?
“Due to the climate crisis, the issue is now being addressed in a different way than in the past. The frequency of extreme events is such that it is difficult to wash one’s hands of them: they are not phenomena that come back after years, but after months, events that happen more times within the same political management.On drought there is now a control room and long-term work has begun: the objective is to carry out a survey of the critical issues, the costs and the interventions necessary for a cognitive framework that it’s always been lacking. The problem is that often there are many subjects who talk little to each other and are not very cohesive, with different resource problems. The same goes for hydrogeological instability”.

Finally, what are the most urgent preventive interventions in view of the immediate future?
“Now the rains, beyond the tragic damage, have partly recharged the aquifers and reservoirs in some areas of the country. The levels have risen. Now we need to understand immediately what will happen in terms of temperatures in the summer: it is clear that if forty degrees and little water arrive soon we will have problems. So the issue is: we know that these phenomena are recurring, they are present, we need to intervene. How? Fixing the reservoirs full of mud, designing expansion tanks, recovering the waste water, hypothesize new desalination plants and a whole series of other necessary interventions. We must be able to manage the water that arrives so as not to always work in an emergency. For all of this we must work immediately, for example before it runs out again next winter snow, our great nature reserve Today we have network infrastructures that lose 40% of the water or others such as dams that are worse than twenty years ago: maintenance and control are needed. I would say that it is clear that we need to increase resilience everywhere to have more strings to our bow. Or it will get harder and harder.”