How to Cash in on Hydroelectric Power Generation? From the Property Tax on Bolted Systems to the Upheaval of Compensation for Civic Uses

Civic uses are ancient collective rights to use the land, that people have exercised in the past, for example by collecting grass, wood, fruits, or fishing or digging sand: in this manner, from the use of the public areas, they drew their livelihood. In addition to the well-known themes of easements and temporary occupations of land and buildings, the appraisal theories have also addressed in the past the problem of civic uses, focusing—in particular—on the determination of the utility resulting from the practice of civic uses of sowing and grazing and defining how to calculate the liquidation fee. Since there are fewer and fewer economic resources available to Local Authorities for services on the territory and since the areas once dedicated—for example—to grazing and woodland are now sometimes occupied by infrastructures that are not economically irrelevant (for the production of hydroelectric energy, for ski facilities for tourist use, etc.), an apparently outdated issue like that of civic uses has suddenly become popular again. In this direction, some public administrations have felt entitled to require the payment of large amounts of previous fees, in an attempt to demonstrate—in many cases without evidence—the existence—in the past—of civic uses on land granted now—in a costly way—for the exercise of functions different from the traditional ones. It is certainly less unpopular to tax a few large subjects, which often have high revenues and which, for their convenience, always tend to find an agreement with the territory, rather than with the community in a widespread manner. However, the question arises—even in the face of the case of the former local property tax on “bolted” installations—whether it is correct to distort the concept of compensation for civic use with only an obvious need for “cash making”, if and how to differentiate the civic use for grazing from that for more valuable activities and, also, how to “distribute” this annual contribution in a wider territorial context than just the municipal one. This paper investigates an operational context in which the evaluation should bring order amongst special and particular values and presents the issue of civic uses, dealing in particular with the case of a hydroelectric power station. Assuming the existence of civic uses on land used for the production of energy, it deals with the determination of compensation for occupation (past and future), developing some scenarios more or less favourable to the two parties (public and private).