Ponte Verde Power Plant

The first projects to divert the waters of the Agno river between Val Calda and Ponte Verde date back to 1913 and bear the signature of engineer E. Albarello.

The dike was built to sit on “the support walls of the tramway station of Recoaro”, recently inaugurated (1911). The collected waters would then travel through a tunnel of about 850 meters to reach the loading tank, from which a 95 m long forced conduit would then lead them to the engine building where they fed two Francis turbines.

The concession was granted in February 1916 by the Civil Engineering Authority, but significant problems soon arose. Although the project had envisaged the construction of a reinforcement wall “in case of exceptional flooding” of the Agno river, this had proved insufficient to contain its waters. As the complaints of the hotel owners of Recoaro reveal: “On the occasion of the first and mild flood in October [1918], the stream filled the artificial basin with material and determined a sudden rise of the riverbed [and the waters] invaded the underground rooms, cellars and kitchens of a dozen buildings along the bank, upsetting whatever was in them. In some cases the very consistency of some buildings was threatened […] to such extent that the commands of some local departments lodging their troops there were compelled to immediate evacuation”. The wool mill Lanificio Mazzotto was forced to pay for damage and make the intake works of the Ponte Verde plant safer, with a more solid dam and a canal equipped with special spillways for water drainage.

The Ponte Verde plant, owned by Eusebio Energia, is currently in operation.