Sicily link will be three times the Golden Gate

$6-BILLION PROJECT Opponents of Berlusconi dream call it a ‘Trojan Horse for Mafia’

The song the sirens sang to Homer’s hero Odysseus is due to be drowned out by the roar of high-speed traffic on a 10-lane highway linking Italy with the island of Sicily.

Planners announced yesterday they were going ahead with the world’s longest suspension bridge, the brainchild of Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister. Critics, however, fear his cash-strapped nation lacks the money to complete the megaproject, which comes with a 4.4-billion euro ($6.1-billion) price tag, a figure likely to be inflated by mafiosi involvement and other overruns.

In addition, environmentalists point out the bridge is being built in an active earthquake zone and worry about its effect on local wildlife.

Certainly the figures are impressive: The huge engineering project across the Straits of Messina will boast a central span of 3,300 metres. That’s more than 1.3 kilometres longer than its nearest competitor, the Akashi Kaikyo bridge in Japan (1,991 metres) and nearly three times the length of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco (1,280 metres). At 383 metres, its two towers will dwarf the Eiffel Tower in Paris ( 320 metres, including transmission mast).

The 60-metre wide bridge will be able to handle 6,000 cars an hour and 200 trains a day, speeding up transportation between Sicily and the mainland.

The entire bridge, including supporting cables, will weigh about 300,000 tonnes and its cables would circle the Earth five times.

“ This is the latest step that reaffirms we are on our way to realizing our project and in the very near future we shall see the physical start of the construction work,” said Pietro Cuicci, chief executive of the state-controlled company overseeing the project, as he announced the building contract had been awarded to an international consortium Impregilo.

“ All skepticism will be quashed for good,” Mr. Cuicci told a news conference.

Most importantly, the bridge has the support of Mr. Berlusconi, who made its construction one of his election promises in the 2001 campaign.

The Italian PM sees the bridge as vital to development in Calabria and Sicily in the neglected and impoverished south. The area is lacking in infrastructure and has a jobless rate of more than 15%, compared with about 8% nationally.

Work on the bridge, which is scheduled to start next year and finish by 2012, is expected to create up to 40,000 jobs.

Proponents say it would boost tourism and business in Calabria and Sicily. Companies would be better able to get their products to market and tourists could just cruise along the autostradas south from Rome to visit.

Opponents say the money would be better spent in improving roads, railways, schools and hospitals in the south — recent earthquakes have betrayed the shoddiness of much governmentfunded construction.

Still others fear for local wildlife — the area is supposed to be a European Union-protected national park.

“ This bridge will be an environmental disaster for many rare species that only live here,” Anna Giordano, the World Wildlife Fund’s representative in Sicily, has said.

“ And the bridge pylon here in Sicily will go so deep it will affect the delicate water table that feeds the natural lakes of Faro and Ganzirri near the shore. People should think about the impact on birds and wildlife.”

The bridge is also unpopular with Mr. Berlusconi’s political opponents. The centre-left has already suggested it will scrap the plan if, as opinion polls suggest, it wins next year’s election.

The country’s Greens say it will be an eyesore and “a Trojan Horse for the Mafia” as mafiosi from Calabria and Sicily vie with mobsters from all over Italy for a piece of the action.

“This is another way of throwing away good money pursuing an infrastructure project that will not be good for the two regions involved,” said Robert Leonardi, a senior lecturer on European politics at the London School of Economics.

The government is trying to head off investor concern that criminal organizations on both sides of the bridge — the Mafia in Sicily and Calabria’s ’Ndrangheta — will try to infiltrate subcontracting jobs. A task force of Italian magistrates has been created to try to fight off the mob.

Salvatore Boemi, a former antiprosecutor, said on the television show Sciusia in 2001 that organized crime typically siphons off 25% of public money arriving in Calabria.

The Romans were the first to consider bridging the Straits of Messina, a still- fabled area where Odysseus encountered the Sirens, birds with women’s heads whose songs lured mariners to their death, as well as Charybdis on the Sicilian side and Scylla on the mainland.

A vital link to the bridge, the 120-km highway between Messina and the Sicilian capital Palermo, was begun more than 30 years ago but has yet to be completed.

At present, travellers have to take the ferry from near Reggio Calabria to Messina, a two-hour journey for train passengers as the cars have to be shunted on and off the boats, somewhat less for those in cars.

The cost of crossing will be identical for those taking the bridge or the ferry.