“No to training, I don’t change my mind”. So says an interview with Corriere della Sera Luca Zaia, governor of Veneto, who takes the floor for the first time after the government (with an amendment to dl Aid ter) gave the green light to extracting gas from larger deposits. “In the 2016 referendum, I supported the no to the exercises, like almost 86% of the Venetians and Italians. And today, confirming that the no is just a matter of consistency”, explains the governor.
For Veneto, it means the possibility of drilling an area in the Adriatic Sea, off the coast of Polesine. “The results of subsidence – the subsidence of the land and the seabed – after drilling in the 1950s were impressive and devastating. There are areas where the bottom has dropped four meters, with a progression of subsidence that is still inexorable today”, specifies Zaia . “Our people are certainly worried about what happened,” the governor said in the interview. Zaia is concerned about Veneto’s tourism: “It’s not a matter of committees, here science tells us that there are and will be problems. The concern is widespread among our people, it’s not a political problem: the first industry in Veneto is tourism , half of the revenue comes from the beaches”, he adds. “Our position is not environmentalist, much less ideological. To say: we are in favor of regasifiers and I can say that we are ready to increase the capacity of what already exists. I fully understand the government’s concern. But there is place and place. And in comparison with Croatia, which extracts gas, Zaia emphasizes: “We have sandy bottoms, not rocky ones like Croatia’s. It’s a totally different context.”
Zaia proposes focusing on the existing regasification plant: “we are going to maximize the potential. Among other things, the new drilling may not give us results for three or four years”, he warns. “We are perfectly aware of the energy crisis and we are convinced that it is serious. But it is equally true that absolutely serious issues cannot be neglected in the name of reason of state. Veneto has always been attentive and supportive, but at this stage it will be difficult to unravel the perplexities of a community that has already paid a heavy price for what it was. In Polesine it was a colossal disaster. The Adriatic is a sea, but with many of the characteristics of a lake. In this context, the effects of any environmental damage would be devastating for tourism and bathing in a very wide range, with a huge damage to the global image: 66% of our tourists are foreigners”, concludes the governor.
Source: IL Tempo
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