Italy's hydropower expansion after the First World War

As early as 1905, prominent politicians such as Francesco Saverio Nitti and Angelo Omodeo had already proposed the nationalisation of all rivers and lakes to facilitate nationwide industrialisation (Nitti Reference Nitti1905). In line with their vision, Italy's abundant water resources were to be extensively industrialised to meet the country's rapidly growing energy demands. However, Nitti's call for the ‘conquest’ of hydropower could not be fully realised during the initial stages of hydropower development due to the absence of both political and legal foundations for nationalisation. The outbreak of the First World War served as a pivotal catalyst for the establishment of a centrally co-ordinated hydropower industry in Italy. Given the country's lack of domestic coal reserves and the urgent need for self-sufficient energy supplies to support the war economy and subsequent reconstruction efforts, the government in Rome sought comprehensive oversight. In 1916, the so-called Bonomi Decree, named after Ivanoe Bonomi, the minister for public works and later prime minister (1873–1951), was enacted to create a state-controlled system for granting concessions for new hydropower plants. The Ministry of Public Works in Rome was entrusted with issuing permits (Lacaita Reference Lacaita and Lacaita2010, 17, 27; Gazzetta Ufficiale 1916), and energy companies were henceforth required to submit their project proposals to provincial civil engineering offices, which would then forward them to Rome for evaluation. Priority was no longer determined solely by the submission date of new plant proposals; rather, it was contingent on which projects were deemed by the ministry to be most aligned with the public interest (Barca Reference Barca and Armiero2006, 36; Lacaita Reference Lacaita and Lacaita2010, 19–22). Although riverine communities received the option to appeal through a newly established court and received financial compensation for diverted watercourses, they had no ultimate authority in the allocation of access rights and concessions (Bonoldi Reference Bonoldi, Bonoldi and Obermair2006, 47; Celetti Reference Celetti and Lacaita2010, 190–198; Pavese Reference Pavese, Bonoldi and Leonardi2004, 89, 95; Ratto Reference Ratto1917). Officially, compensation could amount to up to two lire per horsepower produced; however, practical disbursements were often significantly lower. In some instances, water taxes were never remitted at all (Sievert Reference Sievert2000, 87).

The Bonomi Decree exerted a significant impact, particularly during the war years; between 1917 and 1919, the Office of Public Works granted a total of 385 water concessions. Of these, 283 pertained to electricity production, a response to the growing demand for lighting and industrial needs. Private companies, often backed by financial institutions, demonstrated keen interest in water resources, primarily within the northern provinces such as Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto and Liguria (Barone Reference Barone and De Rosa1993, 228; De Rosa Reference De Rosa and De Rosa1993, 949–950). Subsequently, from 1923 onwards, the Fascist regime leveraged the Bonomi Decree to further exploit the considerable potential of the nation's watercourses, collaborating with a select group of privately owned energy companies, collectively referred to as the elettrocommerciali. This oligopoly comprised companies such as Edison in Milan, the Società Idroelettrica in Piemonte (SIP), the Società Adriatica di Elettricità (SADE) in Veneto and the Società Meridionale di Elettricità (SME) in southern Italy. These energy enterprises effectively partitioned the water-rich mountain ranges across different catchment areas and, armed with both expertise and capital investments, transformed entire river systems into hydroelectric powerhouses (Galasso Reference Galasso and Galasso1993). Between 1918 and 1932, the elettrocommerciali managed to increase hydroelectric production nearly fourfold, surging from just over 900,000 to 4.1 million kilowatts. By 1921, 91 storage reservoirs had accumulated 180 million cubic metres of water, with an additional 41 under construction. By 1932, the volume of dammed water had soared to 1,554 million cubic metres (Armiero Reference Armiero2011, 35; Pavese Reference Pavese and Lacaita2010, 211–212).

Under Mussolini's rule, the Bonomi Decree underwent two amendments, the first introduced in 1924 and the second in 1933 (Gazzetta Ufficiale 1933). In 1924, the enactment of Decree 456/1924 resulted in the nationalisation of all water resources in Italy and introduced taxation on their utilisation (Graf von Hardenberg Reference Graf von Hardenberg, Armiero and Hall2010, 146). This amendment had a notable impact on the already poor rural population, further straining their modest household budgets. In 1933, legislation now offered compensation in the form of equivalent land for expropriated properties; it also restricted the autonomous resource rights of small mountain municipalities and hamlets. With the new law, they were compelled to join consortia, within which they had to relinquish control over their hydro resources to serve the broader interests of the valley community and ultimately also of the state. Ultimately, these resources came under central supervision, as the fees paid by concessionaires were deposited into funds accessible exclusively to the consortia, under the oversight of the Ministry of Public Works. The expenditure of these water rates fell under the purview of central government control, establishing new financial dependency as a result (Graf von Hardenberg Reference Graf von Hardenberg, Armiero and Hall2010, 145).Footnote ²

Hydroelectric power in the Italian Alps substantially increased following the First World War, resulting in the construction of invasive dam schemes designed to store and distribute energy. Owing to the nationalisation of the country's water resources and the consequent limited participation rights of local authorities, hydroelectric companies resorted to expropriating residential and agricultural land for the development of these reservoirs. Artificial lakes impeded and redirected river flows, subsequently leading to a depletion of hydro resources available to local communities. Apart from using them as a source of drinking water, these communities relied on these resources for meadow irrigation and to quench the thirst of their livestock (Armiero Reference Armiero2011, 34–38). In Italy, industrial hydropower introduced a profound industrial intrusion into alpine ecosystems, a violent process succinctly expressed by James Sievert as ‘a declaration of war on the Alps’:

However, when the terrain or the dammed waters escaped this anthropogenic exploitation, catastrophic accidents occurred. Due to Rome's negligence towards remote communities and inadequate construction practices, dam failures led to tidal surges and floods, as in the cases of the Lombard Alps at Gleno in 1923 and Val Orba in 1935 (Armiero Reference Armiero2011, 41–43; Armiero, Biasillo and Graf von Hardenberg Reference Armiero, Biasillo and Graf von Hardenberg2022, 79–81; Pedersoli Reference Pedersoli1973). Fascist hydraulic engineering policy industrialised remote mountain valleys, posed continued threats to communities residing beneath the dams even after these facilities were operational, and, as demonstrated in the case study that follows, submerged entire villages. This phenomenon, akin to the Stalinist transformation and devastation of landscapes resulting from large-scale technical developments such as hydropower infrastructures, was aptly described by Paul R. Josephson as ‘brute force technology’ (Reference Josephson2002, 4–5). The same kind of invasive technology spread through the Italian mountain valleys affected by Fascist hydropower construction, thereby imposing repressive and exploitative ‘hydro-social systems’ on alpine communities (Swyngedouw Reference Swyngedouw2015, 9). The Italian Alps, especially peripheral high valleys, were affected by this repressive transformation caused by hydropower facilities and infrastructures. Like the valleys along the upper Toce, these were agriculturally dependent, structurally weak regions that suffered from ongoing depopulation (Giusti and Toniolo Reference Giusti and Toniolo1932, 41–81; Giusti Reference Giusti1938, 16–22). In the lower-lying alpine valleys, industrial companies from urban regions sometimes invested in new production sites, such as Milan's Montecatini, which established an entire new industrial centre for aluminium production together with a worker settlement in Bolzano. However, just like the electricity generated from hydropower, the revenue from such industrial production sites mainly flowed into northern Italian metropolises like Milan (Bonoldi Reference Bonoldi and Leonardi2009, 222; Leonardi Reference Leonardi and Bonoldi2014, 37, 42; De Luigi, Meyer and Saba Reference De Luigi, Meyer and Saba1978, 77–78).

The River Toce: the development of a hydroelectric powerhouse

During the period from 1926 until the nationalisation of the Italian energy sector in 1962, the principal developer of the Toce basin was the Milan-based energy company Edison. The Toce represented one of Edison's largest catchment areas, alongside the Adda and the Liro-Mera in Sondrio, Oglio Superiore in Val Camonica, and the Noce in Trentino. In the 1930s, the Toce basin accounted for one-third of Edison's total energy production, rendering it the most significant income source for the company's northern Italian market. Although Edison extended its development to other river systems in Lombardy, Trentino and Piedmont during the 1950s and 1960s, hydropower harnessed from the Toce basin continued to be a primary energy source for major northern Italian cities such as Milan in the postwar era. When the expansion of hydroelectric power on the Toce ended in the 1950s, Edison operated 16 reservoirs along the river and its tributaries. Under the Fascist regime, Edison substantially augmented its hydropower infrastructure in Ossola, Antigorio and Formazza: 124,000 kilowatts in 1924, 291,000 kilowatts in 1933, and 530,000 kilowatts in 1949. By 1932, approximately 15 per cent of Italy's hydropower originated from the Toce, a figure that still stood at 13 per cent in 1949 (Fortis Reference Fortis, Fortis, Pavese and Curzio2003, 648–683).

The extensive industrialisation of the Toce basin started in the 1920s with the establishment of a hydroelectric power plant near Cadarese in 1928 and Edison's acquisition of the Conti company two years earlier. The Conti company had been responsible for constructing most power stations along the river until the mid-1920s. Following the Cadarese project, Edison launched two other reservoir projects: one situated on the Morasco high plateau to supply the Ponte power station, and another near Agàro intended for the Goglio station. Although project planning began in the 1920s, another 20 years passed before the two reservoirs were operational. The design and construction of these two reservoirs extended until 1941. Edison faced financial constraints during the early 1930s, primarily due to the worldwide economic crisis, which coincided with a decrease in nationwide energy demand owing to the subsequent economic downturn. As the economy gradually rebounded in the mid-1930s and expensive projects became viable again, Edison's board of directors made the decision to resume work on the Morasco and Agàro projects. Yet these were large-scale, high-altitude construction sites at more than 1,500 metres above sea level, for which the necessary infrastructure had to be built first. After construction began in 1936, a network of newly paved roads, railways traversing steep terrain and cableways bridging impassable ranges facilitated the transportation of up to 1,200 cubic metres of concrete daily from Domodossola to the construction sites. During the summer months, workers processed the concrete on site. Prior to the arrival of workers and the establishment of transportation infrastructure in these high-altitude valleys, two settlements had already vanished, lending their names to the subsequently created reservoirs: Morasco and Agàro (Fortis Reference Fortis, Fortis, Pavese and Curzio2003, 716–719; Zucca Reference Zucca2001).

Voices from the valleys during Fascist hydropower expansion

In 1928, Giovanni Brocca, a civil road engineer from Ossola, wrote two comprehensive newspaper articles addressing the precarious economic conditions in the mountain valleys of the region (Brocca Reference Brocca1928a, 1, Reference Brocca1928b, 1; L'Ossola Verbania 1926, 2). One key issue mentioned in his first article was the abundance of low-value pastureland owned by farmers that demanded costly and intensive cultivation (Brocca Reference Brocca1928a, 1). Indeed, farming in the mountainous areas north of Lake Maggiore had always been arduous. The rugged and impassable terrain, harsh climate characterised by heavy snowfalls and spring avalanches, extensive land fragmentation, and intricate ownership arrangements within valley communities all contributed to demanding labour conditions with limited prospects for either innovation or enhancements (Chiaramonte Reference Chiaramonte1985, 30). Another of Brocca's concerns, however, lay in the reforestation efforts initiated by the state to secure hydropower projects, reservoirs and power lines. This non-collaborative reforestation, as he argued, would further diminish the already unproductive land in these areas (Brocca Reference Brocca1928a, 1). In 1928, the Forestry Militia received money from the electric industry for reforestation in mountain valleys that had been developed for hydropower.Footnote ³ The objectives were to prevent landslides around the constructed infrastructure, retain groundwater for the storage lakes and, in the 1930s, produce wood gas for automobile engines. Indirectly, however, the new forest areas also overgrew the mountain farmers’ grazing and cropland, thereby excluding local agriculture (Armiero, Biasillo and Graf von Hardenberg Reference Armiero, Biasillo and Graf von Hardenberg2022, 79–93). Apart from the construction of storage lakes and water pipelines, reforestation emerged as one of the most substantial interventions in alpine ecosystems through which the regime pursued its autarky plans via its political ecology. In addition to reforestation, Brocca identified the taxation of livestock as another impending burden for impoverished farmers, particularly those who relied heavily on goats, which formed the primary livestock in the valleys (Chiaramonte Reference Chiaramonte1985, 68). Many difficult-to-reach mountain slopes, which were only good for grazing, would lose their value if cheaper sheep were used instead of goats, as sheep were less suitable for such steep terrain (Brocca Reference Brocca1928b).

Yet, Brocca believed that the hydroelectric power plants endangered the existence of the mountain farmer most of all. In the late 1920s, reservoirs had already flooded valuable pastureland such as the Cavalli pasture in Valle Antrona, the high plateau of Codelago in Baceno, and the Vannino and the Busin pastures in the village of Premia, as well as the Kastel and the Toggia meadows in the Formazza Valley. Newly planned dams, such as Morasco and Agàro, would now further exacerbate the problem. All these high pastures were crucial for the alpine economy, serving as vital oases in a stony and barren desert, according to Brocca (Brocca Reference Brocca1928b). Generally, the loss of any pastureland posed an existential threat to the entire valley economy, which depended almost exclusively on livestock and dairy farming. Agricultural cropping did not yield enough for self-sufficiency. And although there were already rich wood resources growing on the steep mountain slopes before the enforced reforestation, forestry and timber production had never reached their full capacity (Chiaramonte Reference Chiaramonte1985, 63–67). Furthermore, storage lakes held back river flows, resulting in a lack of this valuable energy resource downstream. Fishing, mills, hemp manufactories and river trade between the Ossola mountains and Lake Maggiore were dependent on flowing water. Raft boats transported wood, cattle and dairy products down from the mountains and brought grain, salt, rice and wine back up the river from international markets. Some of the commodities were later traded further north towards Switzerland, making the Toce an integral part of transalpine trade networks (Rizzi Reference Rizzi2014, 347–350).

Throughout the 1920s, various newspaper articles praised the construction of infrastructures such as asphalted roads and railway lines (Il Popolo dell'Ossola 1927, 2). Yet this kind of infrastructure, which came along with the first hydroelectric power plants of the Conti electricity company after 1922, also changed the social structure of the valleys. The declining agricultural sector offered ever fewer employment prospects, causing jobseekers to leave the high valleys for the industrial sites around Domodossola, which had developed steadily since the late nineteenth century with the expansion of energy and transport infrastructures (Rizzi Reference Rizzi2014, 438, 454). After Conti, in co-operation with, Girola, the contractor, had installed water conduits from Lake Vannino to supply its first hydropower station, tour reports from regional alpine clubs admired the newly tarred roads, whose comfort, unfortunately, ended at the plant. From there, only old pack trails led them to the higher-lying hamlets. Once they arrived in these German-speaking Walser communities, the Italian mountaineers described the villagers they encountered as not Italian, but rather as typical upland Swiss farmers in character and appearance who had preserved the original character of their Walser ancestors (Avanguardia! 1922, 1). In fact, the newly asphalted roads initially brought tourists to the upper Formazza Valley, where they could also admire La Frua, the famous Toce waterfall, which, however, dried up after the Morasco reservoir went into service in 1940 (Il Popolo dell'Ossola 1930, 2; La Gazzetta del Lago 1930, 1; La Gazzetta del Lago 1938, 8; L'Ossola Verbania 1926, 2; Spezia Reference Spezia1910). Writing about these new hydro industrial infrastructures, in his article Brocca also criticised the damage to older agricultural transport infrastructures. For instance, the installation of high voltage lines along the valley flanks displaced the so-called palorci, the cableways used by mountain farmers to transport hay from their high-altitude pastures to lower-lying villages. As a result, farmers had to abandon some pastures entirely, as transportation via footpaths and mule tracks proved inefficient. These areas could not be afforested due to the stony soil, therefore losing their value to local agriculture entirely (Brocca Reference Brocca1928b).

Reservoir construction under Fascist political ecology

How did the Fascist regime depict hydropower development along the Toce? Ruth Ben-Ghiat's observations suggest that, beginning in 1936, Mussolini intensified his efforts to modernise Italy and its population. To this aim, the Fascist regime leveraged media outlets that were ideologically aligned to disseminate his plans for national self-sufficiency and to supplant the prevailing ‘voice of the ghetto and the amusement park’ with the ‘voice of blood and the spirit’ (Ben-Ghiat Reference Ben-Ghiat2001, 7). During the late 1930s, local newspapers in the mountain valleys north of Lake Maggiore became integral to this nationwide media campaign. This was particularly evident in the context of the Agàro and Morasco reservoirs, whose construction began after 1936, coinciding with a period in which Mussolini utilised media coverage to showcase the ostensibly inexorable progress of Fascist modernisation through large-scale construction projects. One year after work commenced on these two reservoirs, regional newspapers frequently reported on visits by high-ranking party officials who inspected the construction sites along the upper Toce River. These visits involved representatives from the energy and construction sectors, as well as prominent engineers. During their inspections, the progress of construction was assessed, and the enthusiastic workers purportedly extended the Fascist salute to the visiting dignitaries. Notably, even high-ranking ministers from Rome attended the funerals of workers who had tragically lost their lives in accidents, participating in a final salute alongside their colleagues (L'Azione 1939, 2; Il Popolo dell'Ossola 1938a, 3; La Gazzetta del Lago Maggiore 1938a, 4; La Gazzetta del Lago Maggiore 1938c, 4; La Gazzetta del Lago d'Orta 1937, 4). The Fascist newspapers depicted Agàro and Morasco as emblematic of a collective commitment across all social strata, regardless of their social standing – whether they were ordinary labourers, high-ranking government officials or influential entrepreneurs. This portrayal of solidarity in the high alps conveyed the image of a united nation fervently engaged in reasserting its rightful position as an international power (Ben-Ghiat Reference Ben-Ghiat2001, 6).

In his enthusiastic endorsement of the regime, the futurist writer Ignazio Scurto expressed his views in the newspaper La Gazzetta del Lago Maggiore when he visited the construction sites of Agàro and Morasco in the summer of 1937. Deeply impressed by what he believed to be the ‘minds’, ‘hearts’ and ‘muscles’ of Italy at work in these remote mountain valleys, he provided a detailed travel report (Scurto Reference Scurto1937, 4). Initially, Scurto visited the civil engineer Umberto Girola, the director of the eponymous construction company responsible for the construction of dams on the Toce for Conti and later Edison, which also took on the Agàro and Morasco projects. Scurto described Girola as a powerful landscape builder who could ‘break through mountains, control waters, create forests’, but also ‘destroy landscapes’ and ‘build cities’. Contrary to the village tales, Girola was not portrayed by Scurto as a burly druid in a bearskin, but rather as a ‘modern’ and ‘self-assured’ yet modest, proactive and ‘optimistic’ civil engineer. Through his genius, this builder was now bringing life and ‘light’ to the secluded mountain valleys in the interest of Italy's ‘common good’, where previously only the ‘roar of waterfalls’ could be heard (Scurto Reference Scurto1937, 4). In his report on Umberto Girola, Scurto embodied the ideal of a technocratic reformer who, with his scientific expertise, opened remote mountain valleys for the modernisation of Italy. The technocratic transformation of entire landscapes into energy- and resource-delivering powerhouses that served Mussolini's autarky plans constituted a central feature of Fascist political ecology (Ben-Ghiat Reference Ben-Ghiat2001, 63–93).

Subsequently, Girola guided Scurto to the construction sites of Agàro and Morasco, where steep highways had previously been built through deep ravines. Upon reaching the valley floors, the Fascist poet described in meticulous detail the technical specifics and the performance capabilities of the emerging dams, along with their secondary transportation and communication infrastructures. Everywhere they went, they were greeted by daring and muscular workers who saluted them in ‘flawless’ Italian with the Roman salute. With a stoic gaze, Scurto observed how these workers, seen as civilisational ‘pioneers’, tirelessly drove pressure tunnels into the rugged rock using cement and pipes, or skilfully handled heavy equipment at dizzying heights. Despite the arduous labour, the workers assured the visitors that, thanks to the regime's work plans that had brought them here to serve the nation, they had never been happier or felt so free in their craft (Scurto Reference Scurto1937, 4). Again, the workers on the construction sites emerge as the vanguard of a modernised Italy, whose development showed no bounds even in the harsh high-alpine terrain. Through their purportedly impeccable Italian and the Roman salute, Scurto unified in these workers both the emerging Fascist Italian and the ancient legionnaire of the Roman empire that was to be rebuilt (Armiero, Biasillo and Graf von Hardenberg Reference Armiero, Biasillo and Graf von Hardenberg2022, 2).

At 1,600 metres above sea level, Scurto did not anticipate such a ‘modern’ and ‘Fascist’ landscape. Where only falcons and chamois had previously lived, there now pulsed the ‘life of a great civilisation’. In the name of this civilisation, draughtsmen in simple construction barracks meticulously sketched ‘flawless lines’ on their blueprints. Radio, telephones and lighting were all readily available on the construction site. In the end, Scurto conveyed the impression of having arrived in new Fascist cities on the two high-mountain construction sites. With confidence and pride, he wrote: ‘These Roman works in conception and scale will remain as witnesses not only to the initiative and industriousness but also, like milestones, to the tenacious and continuous rise of the Italian people’ (Scurto Reference Scurto1937, 4).Footnote ⁴ Another author, Ida Graggio del Longo, echoed Scurto's sentiments when she reported her overwhelming impression of the construction sites on the Toce in 1938: ‘Dams, barriers, pipes, poles, waters, excavations, working labourers, cars darting about, engineers directing – it's a world that has something fantastical and unreal about it’ (Graggio del Longo Reference Graggio del Longo1938, 8).Footnote ⁵ In another article from the La Gazzetta del Lago Maggiore, the peripheral Ossola Valley was even designated as Italy's new energy hub, where electricity should flow not only to Piedmont but also to Liguria, Lombardy and Emilia (La Gazzetta del Lago Maggiore 1938a, 4). What Ruth Ben-Ghiat identifies as ‘spaces of modernity’ in cinemas, colonies or political mass gatherings, where Mussolini showcased the order and hierarchy of a modernised Italy through mass media, also applies to the regime's large-scale construction sites (Ben-Ghiat Reference Ben-Ghiat2001, 3). Here, newspapers and newsreels could effectively illustrate the allegedly inexorable advance of Fascist modernity.

Compared to the dynamics of development and the virile creative energy that Scurto believed he was witnessing on the two construction sites, he portrays the doomed settlements of Agàro and Morasco as already extinct remnants of a bygone era. Although he does acknowledge the heavy sacrifice made by the villagers who had to abandon their beautiful and idyllic homeland, he describes their fate as simply inevitable in the face of Fascist progress (Scurto Reference Scurto1937, 4). Other newspaper articles also reported on the two hamlets, whose residents had already vacated their houses and lush flower meadows with their cattle to make way for Edison's expansion plans. At least the podestà of Morasco managed to commission the artist Remigio Paggi to draw the village centre before the drowning, so that the submerged houses could be preserved at least in the memory of future generations (La Gazzetta del Lago Maggiore 1937, 3; La Gazzetta del Lago Maggiore 1938b, 4; Il Popolo dell'Ossola 1938b, 3). Ultimately, the two reservoirs of Agàro and Morasco were intended to extract ‘Italian energy’ from the country's ‘beautiful mountains’ and thus support Mussolini's autarky campaign against international sanctions. Through hydropower generated from Agàro and Morasco, Italy was also to gain independence from coal supplied by its Axis allies (Scurto Reference Scurto1937, 4). Nevertheless, the regime's ongoing hydro energy imports from Switzerland did not align with Scurto's portrayal of Italy's ambitious construction efforts and thus were not mentioned by him (De Pretto Reference De Pretto2023, 19). The intrusive disruption of the water balance in two high valleys and the subsequent decline of two settlements in the case of the Agàro and Morasco reservoirs align with Fascism's political ecology. Although the regime celebrated rural Italy in a folkloric manner, ecosystems and people living within it held value only when their resources could be exploited to fulfil Mussolini's autarky aspirations (Ben-Ghiat Reference Ben-Ghiat2001, 3; Armiero, Biasillo and Graf von Hardenberg Reference Armiero, Biasillo and Graf von Hardenberg2022, 179–180). From Rome's perspective, the hydroelectric potential of the upper Toce basin took precedence over the concerns of two hamlets in the remote alpine highlands. However, such asymmetric power relations between centres and peripheries are not unique to Fascist modernity but rather reflect a global technocratic progress paradigm that drove various political and ecological regimes during the twentieth century (Scott Reference Scott1998; Parenti Reference Parenti and Moore2016).

Hydrological consequences for the Formazza Valley

In 1938, the inhabitants of Morasco had to abandon their homes since the entire plateau was submerged under 18 million cubic metres of water, and with it a hamlet, whose history stretched back several centuries. Founded as a Walser settlement in the early Middle Ages, Morasco thrived on livestock farming due to the poor soil conditions on the high plateau. During the Little Ice Age (ca. 1400–1850), it became a summer settlement used by the lower-lying villages for transhumance farming. The construction of a better road in the 1920s allowed families to remain on the plateau until Christmas to provide winter feed for their cattle. In the years leading up to the displacement, severe winters with heavy snowfall and avalanches caused significant damage in Morasco and its surrounding settlements.

The already impoverished valley community thus suffered greatly in the late 1920s, making it even harder to mobilise strong resistance to the construction of the dam. The valley inhabitants, however, did not have much time for objections. The Novara civil engineering offices announced Edison's Morasco and Agàro projects in the summer of 1930, after which the valley communities had only two weeks to oppose them. Neither the people from Morasco nor those from Agàro could afford the long journey to Novara, especially during the summer pasture season, meaning that they were unable to inspect the project files on the flooding of their villages in time, let alone file complaints against it (Zucca Reference Zucca2001). Nonetheless, in 1930, the Ministry for Public Works in Rome received various petitions from the Formazza Valley. In the letters, the communities complained about land dispossession, insufficient financial compensation for the lost properties, safety concerns for villages directly below the reservoir, and insufficient water flow for livestock and agriculture.Footnote ⁶ Two years later, the podestà of Formazza was still forwarding appeals from his community to the superior prefect in Novara.Footnote ⁷

The opposition was fierce not only in Formazza, but also in the valleys of Antigorio and Ossola, since the flooding of Morasco and Agàro not only affected the two settlements but intervened in a valley-wide system of pastures connected by transhumance (Zucca Reference Zucca2001). In the end, resistance in the valleys was unsuccessful, and in Morasco, Edison compensated the farmers with 1.5 million lire for the loss of pastureland for 150 animals, which amounted to only about one per mile of Edison's average annual share capital between 1937 and 1939 (Rizzi Reference Rizzi1998, 143; Bolchini Reference Bolchini1989, 374). In 1939, faced with resettlement, an old resident of Morasco wrote in a letter that, although the construction work would be completed in two years, unavoidable misery and poverty would return to the valley. Overseas emigration to the USA was no longer an option, and only a few lucky people who were employed at the power plant had reliable incomes. Morasco was now going to be submerged, and there was no fodder for the many goats and cattle (Rizzi Reference Rizzi1998, 143). The newspaper La Gazzetta del Lago Maggiore stated that the Formazza Valley, with its new storage lakes, had now become one single hydroelectric power plant, a ‘valle elettrica’ (1937b, 3). Within this enviro-technical system (Pritchard Reference Pritchard2011, 19), there was barely any space left for mountain farmers. In the end, Edison did not demolish the buildings of Morasco before they completed the reservoir. The flooded settlement remained visible at low water levels and served the expropriated valley residents as a painful reminder of their failed resistance. Concerning communal resource access under Fascism, Wilko Graf von Hardenberg observes that single villages under the Fascist state's multiplicity of power centres did have some room for manoeuvre to voice their interests (Graf von Hardenberg Reference Graf von Hardenberg, Armiero and Hall2010, 155). An older study by Guido De Luigi, Edgar Meyer and Andrea F. Saba (Reference De Luigi, Meyer and Saba1978) also showed that, in some cases, large industrial companies were indeed held accountable for their environmental damage, even during the oppressive 1930s, and had to compensate affected rural communities by paying indemnities and invest in less polluting production methods. In the Formazza Valley, too, the villages took advantage of such loopholes of power. Yet eventually, they were unable to assert themselves against the interests of the mighty Edison company.

In the years following 1945, the mayors of Formazza engaged in extensive correspondence with the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of Finance in Rome regarding the damages caused by hydroelectric power and their compensation claims (e.g. 2 February 1947).Footnote ⁸ The municipal representatives expressed their concerns about the economic, social and environmental costs of the reservoir above their community and demanded increased financial indemnities from Edisonvolta – as the company was named after the takeover of the electrical company Volta in 1943. The reservoir had caused significant damage, not only drowning Morasco along with the most fertile meadows in the valley, but also drying up the famous waterfall La Frua and other ponds, leading to a decline in tourism. Fisheries along the Toce had also collapsed, and the meadows were no longer sufficiently irrigated. The lack of water resulted in a need for the costly construction and maintenance of canals and irrigation systems, whereas in the past, simple pipelines would have sufficed. Moreover, all the springs in the valley had dried up, causing a scarcity of drinking water. For instance, the hamlet of Canza lost its access to clean drinking water, for which they had to build a costly water pipeline. Furthermore, the arable land in the valley diminished as the former farmers from Morasco decided to move to the lower parts of the valley to farm. Expropriated families could not make large investments because Edisonvolta had compensated them with only 0.70 lire per square metre. In addition, Edisonvolta refused to compensate them for damage caused by infrastructure, such as unexpectedly draining water from pipes into the river, causing damage to bridges and buildings along the river. Apart from the storage lake, power lines also stood in the way of the logging cableways, which meant that timber could no longer be transported down the mountain. Due to the numerous electricity pylons, the number of tall conifers decreased, and new ones would not regrow for a long time.Footnote ⁹

The development of hydropower with the Morasco reservoir irrevocably harmed the valley instead of enabling any sustainable economic, agricultural or tourist development in the region. The mayor also viewed the roads constructed by Edisonvolta critically, as these routes solely served the needs of the energy industry. No one had enquired about the concerns of the local population during the construction of the roads; instead, more land was expropriated without compensation. Furthermore, it was mostly Edisonvolta's trucks that took up the roads, heavily restricting the local traffic of the valley residents. Yet the municipalities lacked the money to build new or better roads for their current needs. Edisonvolta hardly helped the unemployed farmers either. The hydropower plants could not make up for the resulting loss of jobs, since the company often subcontracted workers from outside the valley. Subcontracting, moreover, led to rising living costs in Formazza, since employees who lost their jobs after the power stations’ commission did not necessarily move away.Footnote ¹⁰

At least appeals in democratic Italy proved more effective than under Fascism. In 1956, Giulio Andreotti, at that time minister of finance, informed the mayor of Formazza that Edisonvolta had to pay the municipality as well as the province of Novara a higher annual water rate retrospectively. For the years between 1941 and 1956, the province of Novara was therefore awarded compensation of around 3 million lire and Formazza around 13 million lire.Footnote ¹¹ For such a major company, however, this was a modest amount. Even in the economically and industrially troubled 1930s, Edison had paid annual dividends of up to around 158 million lire (1938) to its shareholders (Bolchini Reference Bolchini1989, 374). Yet even those financial indemnities did not enable sustainable economic growth in the Formazza Valley, as shown by the letters of complaint that still arrived in Rome in the following years. In the early years of the new republic, the elettrocommerciali continued to dominate the country's energy sector and the mountain valleys affected by hydropower generation still had to carry the socio-ecological burden. Italy's energy economy, which had evolved since the early twentieth century and had consolidated its power over the alpine catchment areas, especially under Fascism, hardly changed until the nationalisation of the entire energy sector in 1962. To this day, neither mass tourism nor any rich agriculture has been able to flourish sustainably in Piedmont's northernmost valley. Rob Nixon's concept of ‘slow violence’, which, in contrast to explosive and immediate violence, is characterised as extended over long time spans and is enacted through a broad series of repressive measures, corresponds clearly with the repression committed by the Fascist regime and Edison against the valley inhabitants of Formazza, Antigorio and Ossola. As Nixon writes, slow violence often unfolds through the deprivation of essential resources or displacement processes, leading to an incremental decline of peripheral communities over time (Nixon Reference Nixon2011, 2–22).