New Road Row Rages in Tuscany

Environmentalists are enraged by a plan to build a Tuscan motorway through the coastal Maremma region which they say will devastate vineyards, nature reserves and woodland and turn an unspoilt landscape into a network of trenches, tunnels and viaducts.

The controversy has gained a further dimension because the transport and infrastructure minister Pietro Lunardi's family own engineering companies which may gain lucrative contracts if he succeeds in pushing the plan through.

Stretching from southern Tuscany up to Livorno, the Maremma is a low-lying region of hills, pine forests, parks and medieval villages which, since its mosquito-infested marshes were drained, has become a haven for migratory birds, tourists, walkers and riders.

For 20 years there has been a debate about how and where its roads should be expanded to ease a bottleneck and fulfil a promise to Brussels that Italy will do its bit for the European transport network by clearing a "Tyrrhenian corridor".

Environmentalists thought they had won the argument two years ago when Anas, a semi-state body which builds and maintains roads, backed a plan to widen 60 miles of the existing coastal motorway, which is called after the ancient Via Aurelia, giving heavy vehicles their own lane and minimising disruption.

The minister of public works and the regional authorities in Tuscany and Lazio agreed, despite a warning by motorist groups that the cost would be double the projected £560m.

That option appears to have been rejected by Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition, which swept to power last year on a platform which included the promise of a rapid upgrading of the infrastructure.

Mr Lunardi said widening the Aurelia would not be enough to ease congestion, and might have to be supplemented by an extra road and a railwayline, shattering what remained of the coast's tranquility.

Better, he said, to build a new motorway further inland in a largely deserted wilderness, using more than eight miles of tunnel and 16 miles of viaduct to create a proper Tyrrhenian corridor and at the same time ease pressure on the coast. The cost was estimated at £1.77bn, to be partly funded by tolls.

An alliance of environmental groups, including WWF, Legambiente and Italia Nostra, said the scheme would wreck a fragile ecosystem and doom the local economy, leaving vineyards, hotels, restaurants and farms abandoned.

Mr Lunardi and the environmentalists share a dislike of a third option recently championed by the regional authorities in Tuscany: a new coastal motorway parallel to the Aurelia.

Critics have accused him of a conflict of interest because before he joined the government he owned several big engineering companies which tendered for public work contracts, especially tunnels. Selling the firms to his relatives has not ended the suspicion that he sees Tuscany's woodlands as a vast business opportunity.

If Mr Lunardi cannot persuade the regional authorities to back his plan, the final decision will pass to Mr Berlusconi, whose government's struggle to deliver even modest change is nowhere more evident that in infrastructure.