The threat from smaller watercourses: 160 million in funds

The most serious event in 2025 in Piedmont was last April, with rainfall in some areas reaching half a metre. The subalpine region, due to the richness of its rivers and canals and the complexity of its mountainous and hilly territory, exposed to landslides and mudslides, is in fact among the most at risk. The Pnrr has allocated 70 million to the Region, with interventions currently being completed, while just under 90 million have arrived from the ReNDiS Plan of the Ministry of the Environment. "The problem today is not the big rivers, but secondary watercourses, which can create big problems in a few hours," summarises Piedmont's councillor for civil protection, Marco Gabusi.

The floods of 1994 and 2000 affected Piedmont's main rivers, the Tanaro and the Po, while in recent years the problems have come from the minor courses, for which it is also more complex to envisage risk mitigation measures due to the lack of surrounding spaces. "In the last event, in April," the councillor reconstructs, "we predicted the flooding of the Po eight hours in advance and we misestimated the river levels by only two centimetres," Gabusi explains. Alert systems and targeted interventions have over the years increased safety along the main watercourses, a more complex issue instead for torrents and minor courses, for which anthropisation is a more complex structural factor to manage. Piedmont is the only region in Italy, for example, to have a tool to support private individuals who agree to leave their homes in an area of risk, with 62 families relocated since 2009 and over 6.6 million in aid allocated to demolish properties and purchase new ones.

"In recent years,' summarises councillor Gabusi, 'there has been a great deal of directional and economic attention tohydrogeological instability. We have put in place planned, substantial interventions, among them, in the Alessandria area, interventions on the embankments for about 20 million, the project on the lamination basins upstream the Tanaro river, in Asti, for 15 million'. With Pnrr resources, in particular, the Garessio bridge, which had created a construction during a flood event in 2020, was demolished and rebuilt. While among the measures being planned is one to make the area safe, with the creation of an escape route forCarega Ligure, a village on the border of Piedmont where, due to the hydrogeological risk, the provincial access road is already closed with 'alert 2'. The ultimate objective of the measures is to make as many people as possible living in the affected areas safe by recalibrating rivers, working on slopes and so on, as a preventive measure and not as a consequence of an emergency. "Prevention has planning and implementation times that do not benefit from derogations, but represents the right approach to the subject," adds Gabusi.