“The courage to go beyond the new dam in the port of Genoa”
Contribution by Guido Barbazza *
* director of the consulting company ixMachina
Following the follow-up of the new public activated by the Port System Authority, the question of the construction of Genoa Sampierdarena is of great relevance. It is necessary to agree on the need for this work, in one way or another, and quickly, given that the Sampierdarena airport is still almost in the same configurations in which it was, however, very well, built in the 1930s, when the merchant ships weighed at most a few tens of thousands of tons: Lilliputian ships if compared with today’s “Ultra Large Container Carriers”.
Having said this, three alternative scenarios of public object are generated by a unique concept of “taking” the current dam and moving it to the sea to create a larger port body of water to allow entry, maneuvering and mooring of large ships container holder. However, Calata Bettolo is only to a limited extent and a little more because, due to the different heights imposed by the “cone” of the airport, large ships cannot operate at the other docks facing west. To stop.
All of this, against an estimated cost for taxpayers of around one billion euros, probably destined to expand due to unknowns and unforeseen events due to the high depth, of the order of 45/50 meters against the current 20/25, to to which the story of the work would go. This approach cannot fail to arouse perplexity, as it is a simple exercise of translation of the existing one and which therefore does not go “beyond the dam”.
And instead “beyond the dam” we should go there, and how. For three valid reasons. First: with the scarcity of flat areas in Liguria, it has always been necessary to create them from scratch with ingenuity and wit by “terracing” mountains and hills and “burying” stretches of water, operations that have allowed the construction of both the port basins of Pra ‘ and Sampierdarena, both at the airport, at Fiera del Mare, and at Ilva. So why not use the enormous opportunity of the new dam also to build important new, “sea” ports and industrial operations connected to the mainland with a swing bridge (as it already does in Marseille and Barcelona)? To build a large ro-ro terminal, for ship repairs, to relocate Multedo’s petrochemical depots and docks far from the city, and perhaps even the petroleum port. Finally, to create the desirable deposits and infrastructures for the new naval fuels of the future such as, in addition to the already common LNG, ammonia and hydrogen.
Second: “beyond the current dam”, there is a conformation of the seabed that should be taken into greater consideration to choose a route of the new dam that complies with it, in order to contain the seabed on which the new maritime works will be based, minimizing times, costs and unknowns.
Third: in consideration of the chronic congestion of the Genoese motorways, and in particular of the Genova Ovest junction, it would be appropriate to “change the game”, addressing the additional traffic that it is hoped to be able to attract to Genoa also on a new route, which could be that of the Genoa Airport motorway junction and the Genoa Sestri Ponente railway station, which once disposed of millions of tons of products from Ilva di Cornigliano, a company that today operates with much lower volumes.
It is also wise to ask ourselves whether it is advisable to allocate part of the vast areas in the sea in concession to Ilva, for decades in a state of total inactivity, to retroportal and logistic activities, and perhaps also on the option of connecting the additional docks that could be built on the new dam with an automated system of the “BRUCO” type. It seems possible, at sufficient cost, precisely by seizing the opportunity of the new Sampierdarena dam, to create a large and ambitious Genoese port development with a rational and efficient lay-out, in a win-win mode, to the environment and quality of life of citizens. Provided you have the courage to go “beyond the dam”.