The deadly cost of Olbia’s urban sprawl
This article is part of POLITICO’s Global Policy Lab: Living Cities, a collaborative journalism project exploring the future of cities. Chapter 3 of the project is presented by Holcim. OLBIA, Italy — After a deadly flood ravaged the city of Olbia, displacing thousands and killing nine, local politicians vowed such a tragedy would never happen again. But nearly a decade later, residents and activists say the government has done little to prevent another catastrophe, even as climate change makes the likelihood of extreme weather events more likely. The Sardinian city is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of flooding thanks to a decades-long building boom in which homes were built without the required permits and with little regard for safety. As in many other southern European coastal towns, including along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts, this construction was largely driven by tourism – and aided by local and national complacency. “Olbia has developed rapidly, very rapidly and largely illegally,” said Stefano Deliperi, president of the green NGO Legal Task Force. To accommodate its growing population, pastures and swamps were replaced with concrete and asphalt, and new neighborhoods sprang up in areas previously occupied by water. These changes prepared the city for a later tragedy, when the worst storm on record hit Sardinia in November 2013, said Barbara Lastoria, an engineer at the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA). “When you create an obstacle to the flow of the river, you increase the water pressure.” Even as the city struggles to strengthen its defenses, it also continues to expand. Now home to over 60,000 residents, the bustling port city is a magnet for people look for a job in the lucrative tourist industry or its bustling port, where every summer thousands of celebrities and wealthy tourists stop en route to the island’s sandy beaches and glamorous resorts. This is leading to increasingly urgent calls for local leaders to step up efforts to ensure residents are safe from future flooding. But with the city’s plan to mitigate flood risk still awaiting regional approval, many warn it’s too little too late. The Making of a Disaster Situated on a floodplain criss-crossed by rivers and canals and surrounded by mountains, Olbia sits in a basin where water tends to naturally concentrate. For decades, Olbia shrugged during occasional flooding; at most, it was a nuisance. “We were used to seeing the city flooded… During heavy rains, some canals overflowed their beds, some tunnels were constantly flooded,” said city councilor Ivana Russu. “We never perceived any danger.” This changed drastically with the storm of 2013, when almost 120 millimeters of rain — equivalent to more than two months of rain — fell on Olbia in just a few hours. The city’s waterways ruptured their banks and flooded entire neighborhoods, killing nine people and to move about 2,700 of their homes. Damage was estimated at approximately 250 million euros. Today, every severe weather alert strikes fear into the hearts of residents. “Every time it rains a little more than usual, it sows chaos throughout the neighborhood,” said Gianluca Corda, city councilor and head of the local high school in the Baratta neighborhood, where a two-year-old child and his mother drowned. The city blocked further construction projects in Baratta after the disaster, classifying it as high risk. The neighborhood looks like an unfinished, abandoned project, with grass overhanging wastelands and its many unpaved roads leading to steep dead ends. Construction projects have been halted in high-risk neighborhoods like Baratta | Giovanna Coi/POLITICS Activists blame uncontrolled development for the devastation caused by the floods. Between the 1980s and the beginning of the 2000s, national building code amnesties in Italy allowed claimants to legalize illegally built houses by paying a nominal fee to the local government, avoiding fines or criminal penalties. Around the same time, Olbia adopted a series of “consolidation plans” which incorporated these unplanned neighborhoods into the city. This allowed the local government to collect taxes from residents, but did not necessarily imply greater municipal oversight. This lack of regulation made the 2013 flood an “unnatural disaster” with preventable loss of life, according to environmental activist Deliperi. “For decades, politicians at all levels have supported uncontrolled urban development, whether legal or illegal,” he said. “And what’s even worse is that the tragedy taught them nothing. It’s still the same old policy. A decade of bureaucracy City leaders say they are taking steps to improve the city’s resilience, but are struggling to make real progress. Two years after the disaster, the city administration adopted a study detailing Olbia’s flood risk and recommending mitigation measures such as stormwater ponds to collect excess water. But he quickly got lost in the maze of Italian bureaucracy, which forces the regional government to give the green light to certain local regulations. At the end of 2020, the Sardinian government finally canceled the city planarguing that he would have a negative impact on the environment on the city and the surrounding countryside. As the city awaits approval of a new proposal passed last year in December, Olbia Mayor Settimo Nizzi presented a preliminary plan of public works to build a flood control system that collects excess water upstream and redirects it to the city. For the plan to be implemented, it will need to be approved by both the city council and the regional government. The plan is “the best possible solution” for Olbia, as it will cause minimal disruption to the city while ensuring people’s safety, Nizzi said in an interview. Once the work is completed “there will be no more danger” for the residents, he added. ISPRA’s Lastoria warned that the plan, which will take several years to implement, is not a silver bullet. “You cannot eliminate risk. At best you can mitigate it, but you will never have zero flood risk because you cannot predict the impact of future events…which, as we have seen, will be very different from what we have seen in the past,” she said. Abandon or save Many Olbia who could afford to have already fled to safer neighborhoods: Between 2011 and 2021, about 2,000 people left Olbia’s high-risk neighborhoods. Those who remain are anxiously awaiting authorities to make the area safer, but know the icy pace of Italian bureaucracy means they will be waiting a long time. Patience is running out. “The administration said it would act – so it should, and quickly,” said Piergiovanni Porcu, who lives in Isticcadeddu, a neighborhood that suffered heavy damage in 2013. Parts of Isticcadeddu were built without the required permits and later incorporated into the town proper | Giovanna Coi/POLITICS “People had to take out loans to rebuild their homes and businesses, some lost everything, even their clothes – and a few lost their lives. We can’t wait another 10 years and keep praying that nothing bad will happen. Some call for more drastic measures. “The administration should do something that is rarely done in this country – demolish all buildings in high-risk areas and relocate residents with compensation,” said environmental activist Deliperi. “Of course, we don’t want people to be thrown out on the streets, but if the administration chooses to leave them there, in a few years there will be another flood just as devastating as 2013 – or worse.” This article is part of POLITICO’s Global Policy Lab: Living Cities. Chapter 3 of the project is presented by Holcim. 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