Vellone River cleaned up for €200,000

This morning, 26 April, Mayor Attilio Fontana and the Councillor responsible for Environmental Protection, Riccardo Santinon, together with the director, Giuseppe Longhi, the Specialised Soil Defence Unit and Water Police, and students from “Cairoli” High School involved in a project called “Civic Monitoring”, organised by their teacher, Ms Guerraggio, carried out an inspection of the woods around the Vellone basin.

 

The work is part of the “package” of the Olona, Bozzente-Luna River Contract between Lombardy Region and Campo dei Fiori. The package entails total investments of €2 million, €280,000 for the Vellone, for which €200,000 has been spent on the final project.

“Different types of work have been carried out on the Vellone, at its source and further downstream: downstream, the bed of the river has been made safe, with reinforcement of the banks and an extraordinary redefinition of the banks; at source, the bed has simply been cleaned, but most work was done on the paths, with the creation of a small wooden bridge, where there had been a landslide, the addition of wooden balustrades in dangerous spots, reorganisation of the paths and the creation of two artificial wading points, one at the furnace and one near the valley station. The work was carried out with great attention to hydrogeological safety, but also to the usability of the paths, which are very beautiful for the people of Varese and tourists,” Councillor Santinon explained.

The path most involved is the “Marmitte dei Giganti” (Potholes), which from the residential area of Velate goes towards the valley station of the Sacro Monte cable railway; this path, which is not excessively difficult, is indicated in Campo dei Fiori.