Compensation measures and local Projects
The Pedemontana Lombarda motorway has been conceived, not as a “necessary evil”, but as an exceptional opportunity to recreate environment and landscape, with the ambition of encouraging a new culture in infrastructure building, which will generate positive and lasting repercussions on the region.
To this end, all stakeholders in the motorway route (Region, Provinces, Municipalities, Parks) have been asked to avoid indiscriminate dispersal of resources in order to concentrate them on a single project to redevelop the landscape-environment, conceived in collaboration with the Department of Architecture and Planning at the Politecnico di Milano.
The EUR 150 million earmarked for mitigation (50 million) and environmental compensation (100 million) interventions will finance the accomplishment of a comprehensive design at regional scale, constructed on the basis of local projects: a large “park for the boundless city” extending north of Milan will be created from the restoration, enhancement and connection from east to west of the andscapes served by the motorway. Integrating the high architectural quality of the infrastructure with mitigation and environmental compensation nterventions, Pedemontana Lombarda will be the most extensive environmental project (stretching over almost 700 hectares - that is, the area affected by the infrastructure) ever carried out in Italy.
If environmental mitigations consist of a range of interventions and technical solutions, mainly connected with the motorway route, environmental compensations are instead carried out - possibly, but not necessarily - in the vicinity of the motorway, entirely orpartly detached from the work itself, in order not to diminish -nay, if possible, increase - the overall value of the surrounding natural environment.
Three types of environmental compensation envisaged (covering a total area of 374 hectares), some of which achievable even before the motorway starts operating:
- a Greenway, a large-scale pedestrian and cycle route, extending 90km from the province of Varese to that of Bergamo, which is linked to, and integrated with, rural cycle routes, reinforcing them;
- local environmental redevelopment projects, involving 44 Municipalities: interventions situated in parks and municipalities crossed by the road, or located in areas of particular environmental value, which strengthen the north-south environmental schemes and support the design of the east-west corridor of the Greenway;
- “compensation measures”, in other words, Company funds made available to 34 Municipalities to undertake further environmental redevelopmentn interventions. Autostrada Pedemontana Lombarda has identified another 18 projects, devised up to the feasibility study stage, which could be undertaken by local bodies (the Municipalities themselves or the Parks and the Provinces authorised by them); 4 regional Parks affected: Parco delle Groane, Parco Boschi delle Querce, Parco Valle del Lambro and Parco Adda Nord;
4 regional Parks affected: Parco delle Groane, Parco Boschi delle Querce, Parco Valle del Lambro and Parco Adda Nord.