A great project to boost-economy in Lake Bracciano Area

APRIL FOOLS’ DAY – THIS IS A JOKE

After a long-lasting downturn, the Lake Bracciano area has just discovered a new fantastic opportunity that will lead to an economic rebound.
As many of you know, the water of Lake Bracciano is used to supply fresh water to the western part of Rome and some other big towns out in the countryside. All this drinking and a dry winter has caused a significant decrease in Lake Bracciano water level.

Lake Bracciano is a volcanic crater flooded by wellsprings and rain, over 200m at its deepest point, so the issue caused by this massive draw of water is around the current shoreline.

The flat shoreline areas (generally beaches) are now around 20m frp, the water’s edge.
For years, many companies tried to use the local thermal breeze to generate energy, deploying a wind-energy power-plant (made of several wind-energy generators). But the depth of the Lake made that impossible, because the maximum depth of offshore wind-energy power-plants is 15m.

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Due to the low water, some areas of the Lake that were previously submerged are now “available” for wind-energy technology, allowing a bright new amazing project to get started.

 

The power-plant will be made by 15 wind-turbines of 1.8MW each, produced by a famous Danish company and deployed by a multi-national, world caliber general contractor.

On the financial side, the investor pool includes several big banks and some private equity firms, including one owned by the current President of the US of A, which means all the authorization procedures will be completedly very quickly.

The project (called “Blowin’in the wind”) will be a Private Public Partnership (PPP). On the Public side there’ll be investment from Local Authorities (Town Councils, Local District and Latium Region. Since public balance sheets are still suffering from the economic situation, they approved a plan to withdraw financial resources from the activities hosted on the Lake, including regattas.

The real big news (for the locals) will is a new tax, owed by the Clubs to the Public Administration, based on the surface area used for sailing courses. We have no the exact figures yet, but sources close to the project predict something like 0,75€/m^2/hour. This may lead to shorter race courses and faster races, but definitive figures are not yet available.

To track the tax dta, each boat sailing on the Lake (racing or just drifting around to enjoy the place), shall have on board a GPS system, monitored by local PAs through a local network. Everyone will be charged 5,00€ each time they go on the water and another 5,00€ each time they return to shore. There will be an additional fee of 0,75€/minute/person on board during the sailing season, plus an annual property tax.

The average Snipe sailor will pay roughly 1.500,00€/y.

The penalties for the tax evaders will be quite severe: heavy fines, boat seizure, 3 -9 months in prison for the skipper!

With all these initiatives local PAs predict they will be able to raise the funds needed to co-finance the “Blowin’ in the wind” project, which is crucial for them; once the power-plant is built and generating energy, the contract provides a “second stage” that will refill the Lake and bring back the water level to its usual.

To do that, Lake Bracciano will be connected with Lake Baikal, through a water-pipeline using the trench of the TAP (Trans Adriatic Pipeline) to save the costs of a completely new ditch. The TAP is currently under construction to carry gas from Azerbaijan to Southern Italy via the Adriatic Sea, so the Blowin’ in the wind project will require some extra ditches from Baikal to Azerbaijan and from Southern Italy to Lake Bracciano.

These will be quite expensive, but due to the altitude of the Baikal, there won’t be any pumps needed since the water will be powered by natural gravity.

This second part should calm down all the tree-hugging screaming people. They don’t want the power plant in the Lake but will have to accept those wind turbines as the one and only chance to see the Lake properly refilled.

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Meanwhile there’s another urgent problem.

The reduction of the mass of water inside the Lake, reduced the pressure made on the bottom of the Lake, as we said: a volcano crater.. actually the volcano is extinct but there are gas pockets down there, usually kept down by the pressure of the water. Once that pressure started to reduce, those gases have begun to get back at the surface of the Lake, so local Health Agency reported several episodes of gysers, and (fortunately only “light”) light-intoxications between animals and people.

There are also some strange things, like an old lady,living close to the Lake shore, after a significant intoxication from those gases, get back and started to speak an unknown language. Only after several weeks, a team of Linguists from the University of Rome has been able to find out which language it were: a dialect from remote region of the Karakorum range, used in some inner valleys close to Kyrgyzstan.. the old lady talk roughly italian, and never left her town in all her life.

There’ve been also other things close to the Lake.. strange things, like cats taking long baths in the Lake waters during night-time,living close to the Lake shore, after a significant intoxication from those gases, get back and started to speak an unknown language. Only after several weeks, a team of Linguists from the University of Rome has been able to find out which language it were: a dialect from remote region of the Karakorum range, used in some inner valleys close to Kyrgyzstan.. the old lady talk roughly italian, and never left her town in all her life.

There’ve been also other things close to the Lake.. strange things, like cats taking long baths in the Lake waters during night-time, an hen made a 1,5kg egg, and a local politician confessed his corruption crimes.. but no one knows if there’re correlations between those facts and the gas emissions from the bottom of the Lake.

Stay tuned!