Railway Fortezza area

The Fortezza railway area was built in the second half of the 1800s on the Brenner line. Over the years it was also intended to carry out the maintenance of steam locomotives operating until the 70’s. It suffered an intense bombing on April 20, 1945 and was a station of customs importance until the Treaty of Shenghen which eliminated the customs inside the EU countries.

Buried waste

The subsoil consists of granite rocks and related debris flow and in historical times the subsoil was modeled with large quantities of residues of carbonaceous slag, also coming from the maintenance activities of steam locomotives.

These materials are configured as historical carryovers, prior to Decree 915/1982, and therefore excluded from the context of abandonment of illegal waste / landfill. To assimilate the material found in an inert carry-over, also for the purposes of the application of art. 185, c.1, letter b) and c) of Decree 152/2006, it has been verified that the material does not cause risks of contamination for the environment or risks to human health.

Intervention options

The study carried out by Ecosurvey, including a specific site Health and Environmental Risk Analysis, allowed to examine several hypotheses of intervention, including the complete disposal of land mixed with waste characterized by significant difficulties and not negligible economic and environmental impacts.

The reuse of materials in situ is an intervention option examined with the aim of creating a green barrier wall to improve the separation of the residential area from the railway area, with landscaping and anti-noise protection benefits for the residential area of Fortezza.

The intervention is configured as a Permanent Safety Measure (MISP) provided for in paragraph o) of art. 240 of Legislative Decree 152/2006 “permanent safety: the set of interventions aimed at definitively isolating the polluting sources with respect to the surrounding environmental matrices and guaranteeing a high and definitive level of safety for people and for the environment. In such cases, monitoring and control plans and restrictions on use with respect to the provisions of urban planning instruments must be provided.”

The MISP intervention option was preferable, compared to the others, as it allows to:

• ensure compliance with the environmental and health requirements applicable to the intended use of the railway site;
• guarantee the real feasibility in certain times;
• implement environmental mitigation useful for the territory and for the town of Fortezza: noise and landscape protection;
• allow to safeguard huge public resources by using them in a more efficient and rational way;
• save disposal volumes in landfills;
• limit the movement of vehicles in inhabited centers and on communication routes, mitigating the disturbance of the population.

Exams carried out

The planning of Permanent Safety Measures (MISP) included the examination of numerous geochemical and geotechnical parameters in accredited laboratories and the following geophysical investigations for technical study in the area of ​​intervention:

• Seismic tomography
• MASW Multi-channel Analysis of Surface Waves
• Electromagnetic investigation at 3 frequencies in a range between 1000 Hz and 16000 Hz;
• GPR;
• Electric tomography.

MISP

The permanent safety of waste is foreseen by encapsulation in a green barrier wall with the function of visual and acoustic mitigation.

The construction of a structure is foreseen with the methods of reinforced earth reinforced with elements calculated to resist the shear, compression and traction forces acting naturally or generated by the loads induced on the structure. The geotechnical study was applied to verify the stability conditions of a bi-facial support structure in reinforced earth, with greened vestments, and built in accordance with the ETA 16/0767 standard, specific for uses such as “wire mesh systems for soil reinforcement for support works “.

A structure with horizontal planar reinforcements is foreseen, in double twist metal mesh, made in accordance with the “Guidelines for the certification of technical suitability for the use and use of double twist metal mesh products” approved by the Council Superiore LL.PP. (n. 69/2013) in accordance with UNI EN 10223-3: 2013.

Approval

The Permanent Security Measures proposed by Ecosurvey have been approved by the Services Conference at the Autonomous Province of Bolzano and by the VIA Committee of the Ministry of the Environment since the intervention, as a variant to the construction of the Brenner Base Tunnel.

In addition to significant environmental benefits, the approved MISP project allows savings of over € 3 million in public resources compared to the initial hypothesis envisaged by the customer.

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