The Lazio Regional Administrative Court rejects the Arlena di Castro (Vt) landfill: there is a landscape restriction

The appeal of several municipalities in Tuscia was accepted: new plants cannot be built in the area

ROME – The fifth section of the Lazio Regional Administrative Court rejects the Arlena di Castro landfill, in the province of Viterbo. The Med Sea Litter project, the judges wrote in the ruling, must be rejected because the territory is located in areas subject to landscape restrictions. The appeal against the Aia, the Via and the Paur issued by the Lazio Region were presented by several municipalities in Tuscia and the province of Viterbo.

THE SENTENCE: NO TO NEW PLANTS IN THE AREA

In the sentence, the Administrative Court underlined “the possible compromise of the environmental and landscape matrices present not only in the territory of the Municipality of Arlena di Castro, but also in that of the populations of the neighboring municipalities, with reference to the entire environment of Tuscia “. But not only that: “the Fear released is in contrast with the environmental profiles deriving from the existence of the intervening constraint of considerable public interest”, wrote the judges, according to whom “the project proposed by Med Sea Litter Italia S.r.l. and approved by the Region Lazio affects part of the land covered by ‘landscape protection restrictions’ and, in any case, falls in an area which, as seen, has been defined as a planned intervention, as reported in the same Via provision , falls into two landscape systems indicated in the Ptpr, namely ‘Natural Landscape of continuity’ and ‘Agrarian landscape of continuity’, for this reason, according to the appellant’s views, art. 24 of the aforementioned Nta of the Ptpr (on the basis of which the Superintendency formulated its opinion preventing the conformity and landscape compatibility of the project presented), which – in point 4.8 – contain the regulations for ‘landfills, storage facilities, recovery facilities, waste disposal plants…’ and, in the following point 4.8.2, indicate that the construction of new plants is not permitted in these areas”.

To this, the TAR wrote again, that the Province of Viterbo, “with council resolution no. 12 of 19 January 2024, issued the proposal for a provincial waste management plan, through which, for of interest, it established that the entire territory of the Municipality of Arlena di Castro is characterized by the presence of insurmountable constraints (defined as ‘excluding factors’) for the construction of landfills and which, as such, constitute an insurmountable obstacle to on-site construction of the system”.