Thousands of people took to the streets in the Sicilian city of Messina on Saturday to protest against a €13.5bn plan to build the world’s longest suspension bridge over the Messina Strait to the Italian mainland.
Organisers said around 10,000 people marched in protest over plans to expropriate some 500 properties to make way for the 3,666m-long bridge, its towers, and approach roads.
They also opposed the project’s scale and environmental impact, and voiced concern over potential mafia interference, reports EU Today.
The risk of earthquakes was another sticking point, underscored by a 2.6-magnitude earthquake in the strait on Monday morning.
“They could offer me three times the value of my house, but that doesn’t matter to me. What matters is the landscape. They must not touch the Strait of Messina,” 75-year-old Messina resident Mariolina De Francesco told The Associated Press news agency.
Her house is near where one of the bridge’s 399m-tall towers would go.
“Our lawyers will take action, and we will stop them. That’s guaranteed,” she added.
Italy’s transport minister Matteo Salvini has called the scheme “the biggest infrastructure project in the West”, reports The New York Times.
He said it would create up to 120,000 jobs a year during construction and catalyse growth in southern Italy, where unemployment rates are 15%, more than twice the national average of 6.5%.
Last week the project, which in modern times has been debated, started and stopped since 1969, cleared a final government hurdle.
The Webuild-led Eurolink consortium aims to conduct preparatory work this summer.
The bridge’s developers hope it will be finished in 2033.
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