Consorzio Florentia and Polo Logistica, agreement for Excavated Earth Disposal

Florence, 15 June 2023

 

Even construction activities are becoming sustainable thanks to some measures to mitigate environmental impact. The trains for the disposal of excavated earth have resumed, related to the works on the AV station and Florence bypass construction site. The first convoys, leaving the future Belfiore station construction site, will transport the excavated earth to the former ENEL mining area of S. Barbara in the municipality of Cavriglia, where it will be reused for the creation of a screen hill as part of an environmental redevelopment and landscape enhancement project of a former mining area where lignite was extracted until 1994.

 

This is made possible by the agreement concluded between Consorzio Florentia (formed by Impresa Pizzarotti as lead partner at 51% and Saipem at 49%) and Mercitalia Rail, a company of the Polo Logistica within the FS Italiane Group. Over the next three years, the trains will transport more than 3 million tons of earth from the Belfiore and Campo Marte construction sites. In the first weeks, disposal will take place with one train per day, which will increase in the following months when the mechanized excavation work with the Iris Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) begins.

 

Using rail transport instead of road transport will prevent an estimated total of over 100,000 heavy truck journeys during the entire period, significantly reducing the environmental and social impact on the Florence community, due to traffic in a heavily congested urban area. This corresponds to a saving of 24,500 tons of CO₂ equivalent, representing 90% less CO₂ compared to the same transport by truck.

 

Thus, the project’s strategic focus on sustainability is reaffirmed, along with the introduction of new management and transportation methods for excavated earth and rocks.

 

The Florence Bypass and AV Station projects, carried out by RFI, the lead company of the Polo Infrastrutture within the FS Group, will allow the separation of flows between regional and high-speed trains, improving operational regularity and increasing the capacity of the surface network for the benefit of local traffic. Once the work is completed, there will be no interference between the two different types of service.

 

The underpass project involves the creation of two parallel tunnels at a depth of 20 meters, one for each direction of travel, each about 7 kilometers long and connected by safety bypasses every 500 meters, between the Florence Campo di Marte station and the area of Viale XI Agosto, located between the Florence Rifredi and Florence Castello stations.