Spotlight | Italian insights
With Italy’s dams aging beyond 65 years, rehabilitation has become crucial to maintain their structural integrity and functionality. From historical milestones to cutting-edge interventions, members from the Italian section of ICOLD explore Italy’s strategic response to sustaining its dam infrastructure in the face of modern challenges
Below: Beauregard Dam
ITALY HAS A LONG tradition in the construction and management of dams. In modern times, their construction accompanied the industrial development of the country after the First World War and was consolidated after the end of the Second World War in 1945. A slowdown in construction can be noted after the dramatic and well-known Vajont dam disaster which marked a turning point in Italian energy strategies with an acceleration of the transition of electricity production from hydraulic sources to fossil fuels. The average age of Italian dams has exceeded 65 years. Hence the need to implement rehabilitation interventions in order to keep these structures operational, and providing essential basic services of water supply for drinking and irrigation, power generation and other complementary uses (flood
control, recreation, firefighting, etc.). ITCOLD has monitored the progression of rehabilitation interventions over time and reported details of their type in a technical bulletin. Rehabilitation concerns approximately 30% of
Italian large dams, many of which have hydroelectric purposes (approximately 60% of the total). The motivation can be traced back to the greater economic availability of the private sector compared to the public. The cost of individual interventions is highly variable but always less than 10% of the reconstruction value of the works. It should be noted that environmental and anthropic factors, limitations in the availability of exploitable sites, as well as economic reasons have so far made the possibilities of building new dams problematic.
10 | January 2025 |
www.waterpowermagazine.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45
