Cava Germaire Spa

Objective

The project has been approved by the Region as right for the environmental aspects that it exploits, positively intervening on sites of particular sensitivity and importance for the territorial environmental strategies.

Context

The project area is located between Carignano and Carmagnola, about 25 km from Turin, and is included in the Po fluvial strip, in the first plain trait at the feet at the Alps, an ideal geological site for gravel deposit.

The site of the intervention is acknowledged as a result of the extractive activity, as part of SIC and ZPS from the respective European directives, as the prospective habitat for numerous kinds of avifauna even if, before the intervention, the managerial objectives of such recognitions had been jeopardized by the degradation in which the territory was.

Solution

The impact of the extractive activity in the most sensitive areas is reduced to the minimum in the period of realisation of the project (only a device in function in the centre of the lake); the impact of the processing activities and storing will be drastically decreased thanks to the removal of equipments and stores.

To accelerate the process of constitution of the wooded vegetation, the realisation of serial stains has been planned: formations that, from the outside toward the inside, foreshadow the different evolutionary stadiums of the wood, starting from grass formations, to prairies with the beginning of the shrubby colonization, to shrubby formations, with the beginning of the arboreal colonization to properly reach the wooded central Area. For the species, we have referred to the climax formations of the area; therefore, only native plants will be used.

For the ‘lanca’ of S.Michele there have been realised:

− Abridged interventions of removal of the sediments and of the biomasses;

− Insertion of a water feeding system on top to guarantee a suitable hydraulic turnover and a system of aid feeding;

− Adjustment of the river bed of the channel effluent in order to facilitate the movements of the “ichtycfauna” with the Po river.

Result

The hypothesis governing this strategic agreement for mining in a protected area, is that the result of the interventions not only represent the least harmful way (logic underlying the assessment of impact), but it is also significantly positive for the environmental quality and fruition, net from “marginal” benefits, which are not of public interest, resulting from the production of gravel. In 2020, as a result of these interventions, a natural river with an almost continuous strip of 30 kilometres, upstream ofthe Po river in Turin, will be available for use. CAVE GERMAIRE SpA, has obtained the authorization to the cultivation of its fields by agreeing on an important twenty-year project with the responsible control bodies (Region, Park Authority, Province and Municipalities) in accordance with current regulations, including the LR 40 / 98 (Environmental Impact Assessment - EIA).