Problems, Venetian Problems

Meanwhile, in other news….

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Now that the G20 has come and gone, the surface of life that was so agitated thereby has returned to its normal level of agitation.  There are plenty of things to keep track of, to one degree or another.  In some cases, to many degrees.

Here are a few of them:

REDENTORE:  The annual feast of the Most Holy Redeemer is tonight and Sunday — the big waterborne festivities on Saturday, the races and big religious celebration on Sunday.  Last year there were no fireworks, which left a huge hole in the festivities.  This year there will be fireworks, but in a serious effort to prevent the hazardous clumping-together of crowds the city has imposed a limit of 18,000 people, total, and those persons have to have made a reservation.  To reach the place or area they’ve booked, they have to show their printed ticket as well as their “Green Pass,” or other certificate of vaccination, OR a document that confirms that their swab was negative within the 48 preceding hours.

My new Green Pass.
The obverse side shows my name, birth date, and a few other details not interesting to anyone but them and me.  This document allows me to travel to other European countries without having to quarantine.
Barriers are being set up around the reservation-only zones. Here, this fence ought to keep the traffic lanes separated. If Carnival is any example, it won’t.
These barriers are intended to prevent people falling in the water, I suppose; maybe they should prevent people in boats trying to board somebody or put them ashore?

The rules are the ones that we all know so well by now: Masks and distancing. Tickets have been organized in sub-sectors.  Redentore used to be a real let-it-all-fly sort of festa; a party now where everyone will have to behave like Captain Von Trapp’s children is going to be really different.

Boats obviously won’t be permitted to tie up to each other: social distancing afloat.  No trying to pass from boat to boat.  No dancing parties aboard (take that, you big floating discotheques).  The watery areas are delimited according to size and the use of boat, and you have to show a printed “ticket” from your booking (on water as on land) to be permitted to enter the area.  Once your boat has entered its appointed area, it is forbidden to exit, nor will it be permitted to put people ashore.  Boat captains have to keep a complete list of passengers for 14 days.  Also, wear your mask.

There are regulations for people booking space along the fondamentas to watch the fireworks, or to scarf their dinner, but I’m not going to go into all that.  If you’ve booked a space, you already have the rules.  If you haven’t booked, you’d better hop to.  Preference is being given to Venetians, it says here.

Lino and I will not be there; it’s been years since we decided we couldn’t stand the mayhem of the motorboats in the dark, with their drunk drivers.  We might walk up to the fondamenta dei Sette Martiri (where I didn’t see any signs of assigned places) if it’s not too crazy.

The little yellow slice, Area 5 Dogana, is the space allotted to traditional boats, either rowed or with a motor of maximum 9.9 hp.  The other zones are organized for boats according to size and use (pleasure, work, etc.).  No need to get into all the details.  Note the white emergency exits.  When Lino was a boy, the Giudecca Canal was so thickly covered with boats — all propelled by oars, of course — you could walk across them from one bank to another.  And they were all massed in the Giudecca Canal to the west of the votive bridge, up toward the Molino Stucky.  The Bacino of San Marco was just background decoration.

THE BIG SHIPS:  Ship-haters rejoice: As of August 1, the biggest ships will no longer be permitted to pass through the city.  These ships are defined as having at least one of the following characteristics: Gross tonnage above 25,000 tons; hull at the waterline longer than 180 meters; height of ship more than 35 meters, excluding ships that are motor- and sail-driven; use of fuel in maneuvering that has a percentage of sulfur equal or superior to 0.1 per cent.  Like any other cargo vessel, the big cruise ships will be routed from Malamocco to Porto Marghera, one of many solutions that have been discussed since dinosaurs roamed the earth.  But this is just a stopgap.  The real solution is the offshore port, and that’s not happening tomorrow.

Seeing that neither Porto Marghera nor anywhere else will be ready this year, the MSC Orchestra or Magnifica and Costa Deliziosa (the only big ships on the dance card this summer) will be departing, respectively, from Monfalcone and Trieste, up along the northern Adriatic coast.  Passengers arriving in Venice will be swabbed or otherwise health-checked at the Venice Maritime area, then loaded on buses and driven a few hours to their ships.  So much for the thrill of cruising from Venice.

The offshore port project is going to take some time.  Phase One, send in your proposals by December 31, 2021.  Make sure your design can accommodate modern container ships as well as the biggest cruise ships, and make sure the port will be safe in stormy seas because there won’t be any lagoon to protect you anymore.  Phase Two, five experts evaluate the proposals.  Phase Three, choose the winner.  That decision will be made by June 30, 2023, if all goes as planned.  That’s a pretty big “if,” I feel compelled to add.

Seeing that creating the offshore port will take at least five to six years, Porto Marghera will have to be modified fairly quickly.  Building the new passenger terminal there, deepening the channels and revising the current industrial docks will cost 157 million euros — a hefty sum for a temporary set-up.  Then again, “temporary” has a flexible meaning here.  The Accademia Bridge was built in 37 days in 1933 as a temporary structure while proposals for the real bridge were to be evaluated, and it’s still there.

I have the impression that the sudden decision on dealing with the big ships is linked somehow to the fact that UNESCO recently decided to designate the water entrance to Venice — Bacino of San Marco, Canale of San Marco and the Giudecca Canal a national monument.  This is surprising in that UNESCO, when it listed Venice as a World Heritage Site in 1987, specifically included the lagoon.  You wouldn’t know that by the savaging of the environment that has gone on since then, but anyway, I’d have considered the Bacino, etc. as part of the lagoon.  Now it’s a national monument.  Okay then.

Spare a thought, though, for the humans — 1,260 direct workers and 4,000 indirect workers — involved in what will be a radical restructuring of the whole shipping enterprise here.  Many are fearing for their jobs.

Almost no workers believed that this decree would come so fast, and right in the middle of the season.  The maritime agencies are also worried.  Every shipping company is required by law to engage a maritime agency, but, says Michele Gallo, head of two agencies, “You can’t even think of having the same ships as before coming to the docks at Porto Marghera, using the same places as the commercial ships.  This is a devastating decree.”  Organizing the entry, passage and departure of so many ships through the inlet at Malamocco and along the Petroleum Canal (Canale dei Petroli) is going to be a job worthy of an air traffic controller.

By the way, all this increased traffic will make it even more important to keep the aforementioned channel dredged.  However, the deeper the channel, the faster the tide enters and exits, and already this action removes millions of cubic meters of sediment from the lagoon every year.  Everyone knows that the Canale dei Petroli has thus caused incalculable damage to the lagoon and its extraordinary ecosystems.  Ironic that UNESCO decided to designate part of the lagoon as a national monument with the notion of protecting it, but they seem not to have taken into account the effect so much extra traffic will have in a channel that essentially behaves as if it were a water vacuum sucking the soil from the lagoon.

This was the lagoon’s circulatory system in 1901. Lots of arteries and veins and capillaries kept the lagoon biome thriving.
In 1932.  Notice the large natural channel at the bottom of the picture — the inlet at Malamocco.  Here it is the shape of an oxbow.  Works fine for the lagoon, but wasn’t at all suitable for commercial traffic.
The oxbow was furloughed when the Canale dei Petroli was dug in 1964-68.  The channel shoots straight from the inlet on the right to the shoreline, and was dug along the shoreline in order to allow the tankers and other big merchant ships to reach Porto Marghera in the upper left-hand corner. After only two years, the effect was evident.  Today, in view of the cruise ships arriving, dredging the channel has already begun, and will continue for 12 months.  A deeper channel means the tide will be faster than before.  All the little canals that used to be there helped to slow the tide down, but as you see, the tide won.
On the left you can see the tide patterns before the Austrian domination (1814), while on the right the tide patterns in 2009.  So by all means make all the big ships traverse the lagoon from Malamocco for however many years it will take for the offshore port to be built.  I’d just avoid presenting myself as a defender of the lagoon at the same time.

FREE MARCO ZENNARO:

Marco Zennaro (veneziatoday.it)

The 46-year-old Venetian businessman, well-known and loved by many, has been in prison in Sudan for three months.  He is the owner of a company that produces electric transformers that has been doing business in Sudan for years.  He has been accused by a Sudanese company of fraud, but the situation is an utter tangle of claims and characters.  However, the photograph of the cell in which he was kept for two months with 30 other men, at temperatures of 114 degrees F., was all too comprehensible.  Yes, the Italian government has attempted to intervene; yes, money has been paid, but turns out someone wants still more.

Now he is on house arrest in a Sudanese hotel, awaiting the next hearing (August 9) in the string of court appearances that may finally resolve the problem.  He has already been absolved of two accusations, but it’s hard to know who wants what at this point.  Of course money is at the core of this.  Marco is well-known in the Venetian world of sport — Venetian rowing, for one thing, as well as rugby.  As it happens, Lino has known him since he (Marco) was a boy.  Also, Lino taught his mother how to row.

This one is written in English, no less.

“We Support Marco.” Petitions and initiatives continue. On June 13, some 15 Venetian rowers conducted a 24-hour event in which they took turns rowing from the Rialto to the Salute and back a la valesana (one person with two oars).  They continued from noon June 13 to noon June 14 to raise awareness of this situation and urge its resolution.  But here we still are.
“Let’s get Marco back.”  This banner has been posted around much of Italy by now, by a far-right “association of social promotion” called CasaPound. (lagazzettatorinese.it)

MOSE:

Are we heading back to this again? Oh boy.

Mose worked last winter (except for one time), so you might think all is well?  You would think wrong.  I’m starting to dread the winter again.

The plan was to complete all the work by June 30, and declare the project finished on December 31, 2021.  But that timetable is now in tatters for  various reasons, primarily money problems (as always).  The refusal of some suppliers to continue without payment also slowed things down, and the work was officially suspended yesterday, July 16, even though it actually had been stopped for three months already.

Without regular tests, without personnel from the companies involved, without some degree of ongoing maintenance, it’s not certain the gates will even rise when needed.  Broken elements haven’t been replaced, parts are deteriorating because there is still no air conditioning in the underground gallery.  There is severe corrosion that has been reported for years, to the frames of the underwater tensioners as well as the hinges of the gates.  Encrustation of barnacles and other crud will certainly make the gates heavier.  The gates at San Nicolo’ have been underwater for eight years now.

Bids have been solicited for a maintenance program budgeted at 64 million euros, even though some estimates maintain that at least 100 million euros will be needed for this every year.  (Personal note: Lino has never batted an eye at the titanic construction costs.  His refrain has always been simply “And the cost of the maintenance?”)

A Venetian deputy in Parliament, Orietta Vanin, has written to Enrico Giovannini, the Minister  of Public Works, saying “A plan is missing for the launch of the work and the completion of the machinery.  When is Mose going to be tested?  What is the risk to the city in view of autumn?  At what point are the interventions for the security of the Piazza San Marco?  We’ve asked several times but have never had a response.”

TOURISM:

Not exactly a horde at 9:00 AM on a Saturday morning. I did see a group of about 15 people being guided around the Rialto Market.

The infamous hordes are not yet swarming the streets; tourists there are, many of them still day-trippers, but not insupportable numbers, by any means.  We could probably use a good horde or two right now.  Happily for everyone, American travelers are finally permitted to fly to Venice (I presume also to the rest of Italy).  Delta Airlines has non-stop flights from Atlanta and New York, and the other day 200 passengers from the USA disembarked to great, if silent, applause.  That’s just a drop, however, as the Venice airport is currently handling 15,000 “passages” a day, a mere third of their daily pre-pandemic total.

Still, no coherent plans for managing the eventual masses have yet been proposed.  The secretary of the artisans’ association, Gianni De Cecchi, says “The pandemic has passed in vain.”  So stand by for the usual complaints, protests, and laments to come forth again.  Probably toward the end of next summer, if forecasts can be trusted.  Stay tuned.

I like these tourists. Too bad there aren’t enough of them to keep Venice afloat.
Send more of these, too.
I hang the sheets out to dry, he raises his sail. The life, she goes on.
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Problems

Phase 2 begins

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In my last post I insensitively described small-business owners (shops, restaurants, hair salons, etc.) as “howling” to reopen.  If I were in their place, I would be howling too.  And the same anguished cries are being heard throughout Italy — in Florence, Rome, Milan, in hill towns and beach resorts and places you’ve never heard of — as the bills and “Overdue Rent” notices continue to drop through the slot in the locked doors of shuttered stores of every kind.  But the reopening is planned in stages, and belonging to a category whose stage has yet to arrive is heating up everybody’s atmosphere.  More on that in my next.

At the beginning of the quarantine in Venice, when silence fell and motion ceased, a few people wrote to me expressing variations on “You must be enjoying the peace and quiet!”  I know they would never have written that to a widow just returning home from the funeral, but it seemed similarly inappropriate.  I understood that they meant that compared to the chaos and unpleasantness of being overrun by tourists, the opposite extreme ought to be a welcome relief.  It wasn’t, it isn’t, it can’t be.  One extreme is a bad correction of another extreme.  Even on the first day of quarantine I realized that the quiet did not signify peace — au very much contraire.  We have listened for two months to a silence that might have been that of the world underwater when you’re trying to see how long you can hold your breath.

But the non-essential small-business owners and artisans and their colleagues and cohorts and conjunctions have been living in a world of -3,000,000 per cent peace and quiet because they’ve been closed for two months — and in many cases, it will be three.  And many of their businesses depend on tourists, which apparently have gone extinct.

Please note: No more tourists isn’t a problem just for Venice.  This is a European, even global, phenomenon.  A recent report by a group of analysts estimated that in the month of March, the tourist income in Europe shrank 68 per cent relative to that month last year.  ENIT, the Italian national tourist agency, reports that bookings for Italy from April 13 to May 24 are down 84.6 per cent relative to the same period last year.  (For the record, bookings to France are down by 82.9 per cent, and to Spain 80.3 per cent.)  ENIT predicts that tourism to Italy won’t be back to pre-2020 levels till at least 2023.

High season?  Where?

What can there be in Venice but tourism?  This is a question that people have been struggling with since before I came here in 1994, and have continued to struggle with as the monster grew and grew, like Audrey in “The Little Shop of Horrors,” constantly bellowing “Feed me!”  I hope somebody has been spending their stuck-at-home time studying whether anything else can keep Venice going, because this is the moment to step forward.

Happily for us, the world is coming back to life in via Garibaldi and environs; the first signs were a very sunny Sunday and the following two days.  More motorboats in the canals, more people out on the street, suddenly children were everywhere, running around and shrieking — it’s great.  It’s like some safety valve suddenly popped open.

Nobody waited for a sign to say “Unchain the children!”  But Sunday evening they were still out at sunset, racing around, having finally tired of covering the street with hopscotch boxes scrawled with yellow chalk.  There are noticeably more bikes and scooters around, too — they must have been the promised prize for not rebelling during two months spent almost exclusively indoors.

Some stores have been opening very gradually.  There were those that remained closed from the first day, and will have to remain closed till the official permission is granted (see chart below).  Others shortened their hours to opening only in the morning.  The supermarket closed early, and remained shut on Sunday.  I’ll be interested to see if that continues.

Over the past week or ten days, a few businesses (the office-supply/giftwrap/school supply store, the children’s clothes shop) were open all day, but only on Tuesday and Wednesday.  It was an adventure trying to keep track of what you could get, and when, but I was surprised at how quickly one could adapt.  The daily round just took more planning, and more willingness to wait in line.

Weeks ago, the big tobacco/toy/lotto shop at the end of via Garibaldi (the two smaller ones stayed open) posted new hours: “From Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM Monday closed.” That didn’t bother us because we don’t smoke, and the various gambling schemes were suspended, so no playing the lottery. That surprised me — I thought the lottery would be the last thing standing in the devastated national economy, but evidently the government was more concerned with other millions and billions that really would keep people going, and not the phantasmagoric winnings that are always just about to come through.
The detergent/cosmetics/housewares store also cut back on hours. Too bad if you forgot to buy your Dead Sea exfoliant in the morning, you’ll just have to wait till tomorrow.
All sorts of stuff for kids, especially glittery garb.
“Emma’s Road ships!” (This in itself is amazing, because the post office on via Garibaldi has been shut since the acqua alta of November, 2019.) The shopowner (Emma, perhaps?) may have had to stay home but she obviously rejected the idea that she couldn’t keep working during lockdown.  “We can make an appointment for a video-call for virtual shopping…It’s possible to request information (photo, prices, sizes and measures) or book the articles in the following ways:  1 Sending a message to our Facebook page, 2  Contacting us via WhatsApp at 3491089086, 3 Calling this number 3924152292.  Shipping is free for all orders that are at least 99 euros or by delivery to your home if you’re in our area.  It’s possible to pay by bank transfer or PayPal.”  She doesn’t intend to leave ANY customer outside in the rain, that’s for sure!
This is progress — the office supply store has moved past the “only Tuesday and Wednesday” phase and now is open every morning from 9:00 to 12:30, but only one person at a time may enter, and must wear mask and gloves, and maintain a distance of two meters between — well, I guess that would be between the one client and the one shopowner.
I suppose it’s good news that funerals can begin to be conducted again. The need to prevent crowds has meant that since February 23, the dear departed departed alone.  This notice doesn’t mention that only a maximum of 15 people will be allowed to attend, and doesn’t indicate who the bouncer at the door is going to be to keep the 16th person out.  No funeral mass, either — those will begin on May 11, but this is a step forward.
These are the rules:  Only up to 15 people can enter.  They must wear a mask.  Enter and leave rapidly without blocking the door.  In church observe the prescribed distance.  Be seated on the pews where there are signs.  Other directions during the religious rite.
As you see, the openings are staggered according to the type of business. The hairdressers are furious;  they’re listed to open June 1, as are restaurants.  But restaurants are making do meanwhile by offering take-away food; it would need someone cleverer than I to organize a take-away haircut.  Or are those called “wigs”?  Shops (such as clothing) and team practice recommence on May 18.  The notice says “No” to playgrounds for children, but they have no idea how via Garibaldi works!

 

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Problems

Drink up (water main break)

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And you thought leaks just went drip drip drip. (Photo: La Nuova Venezia)

Saturday morning a week ago I turned on the kitchen tap and water came out as usual except that it was wobbling.  I soon learned that certain stretches of the city — Sant’ Elena, parts of Castello (us), and even parts of Cannaregio and San Marco — were suffering water pressure problems and the fresh water was down to trickles in some houses.

The water company was already on the case, having discovered that at about 8:00 PM on Friday evening, some sort of heavy transport boat had driven blithely over a slightly submerged water main 60 cm (23 inches) in diameter and ripped it open.  The tube is of steel, so I’d say that was quite a little navigation error.  And I say this disaster was created blithely because the tide was low and the tube was in an area clearly marked as being forbidden to navigation.  Conclusion: The rogue boat was taking a short cut (sorry) across an area that shouldn’t ever have been crossed, especially not at low tide.  So the water main was doomed.

Meanwhile, fresh water was surging to the surface of the lagoon on the north side of the Arsenal like a submerged geyser, at the rate of 52 gallons (200 liters) per second. By Sunday the tube had been repaired but 7,132,645 gallons (27 million liters) of fresh water had poured into the lagoon. It must have been a shock to the fish, who may well never have tasted (or breathed, or whatever they do) salt-free water.

The boat hasn’t yet been identified, except that traces of zinc on the steel victim left by the propeller and rudder make it fairly clear which sort of vessel was involved.  If the perpetrator is ever identified, he’s going to have to face accusations not only of breaking the traffic law, and damaging city property, and the environment (I assume), but, just as bad, of not reporting it, which I suppose amounts to leaving the scene of an accident.  Hitting and running is frowned on, even if the victim is a steel pipe.

Perhaps you can make out where the real channel is located (hint: it’s to the left of the pilings, which is why they’re there; the motorboat leaving a foamy wake clearly indicates where boats are supposed to go). The space between the wall and the pilings is totally off limits. Does it seem particularly hard to discern where the channel is? Only about a thousand boats per minute (made up) travel back and forth on it.
The space is rather tight between the wall and the cement pedestal with its two warning signs. Of course, they’re pointing outward, so if you had decided you needed to slink along up next to the wall, you wouldn’t have much indication that it was a bad idea. But why would you be slinking along the wall?  It seems like an inherently bad idea, considering that it is almost guaranteed that the boat wasn’t heading under the arch in the wall and into the Arsenal.  That’s because it’s a military zone and its dwellers don’t look kindly on civilian intruders.

Now that I’ve introduced the subject of water in Venice — I mean in it, not around it — I’ll be dedicating a few upcoming chapters to how Venice managed to survive for 1,000 years without a steel water main, not to mention faucets.  Yet fresh water there was, and the system for providing it was just as amazing as anything else the Venetians have ever done, from building the Doge’s Palace to the invention of italic type.

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MOSE, Problems

MOSE again, still, forever

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If it weren’t for the lagoon, maybe people wouldn’t care quite so much about Venice. Interesting thought to ponder. But the lagoon would probably be better off without Venice, because then it wouldn’t be abused and tormented to make sure that Venice won’t have some water in the streets sometimes.

What everybody loves about Venice (among many things) is how old it is.  And that is indeed a thing to love.  I imagine all those amazing designers and builders and artists working away centuries ago, believing that their handiwork would last for, oh, maybe ever.  And because they were first-rate craftsmen, it turns out that most of them were right.

You might say that MOSE is also going to last forever, but not in a good way.  I don’t write updates on the continuing calamity that is the world’s most preposterous project because I’m bored by the mendacity, magnitude and monotony of the problems.  Everything has gone, is going, and will be going, wrong with this thing until Jesus comes back, so updates are pointless.  In fact, I’ve begun to suspect that the whole thing started with a bunch of drunk people sitting around one summer afternoon on some rich person’s yacht or private mountain, who decided to break the boredom by inventing a game in which the winner is the one who finds a way to waste the most money on the most pointless enterprise in the history of the world.  If you can call it “winning.”  Bonus points for environmental damage, or if somebody dies.

But the latest headlines have barged into my brain and made me think about it again, if only briefly, and my thoughts are not lovely.  I can sum it up for you:  Yet more things have been discovered to be screwed up, and fixing them will cost lots more money.  This has become the refrain of the Marching Song of the MOSE Squadron, while the bass singers set the jaunty rhythm “Money for me, money for me, money for me…..”  And as you read, consider (as I have) that if I had done the calculations, it’s obvious they would have come out all wrong.  But I am not a civil engineer (I’m hardly civil at all) and I do not have a piece of paper from some institute which implies that I have studied how to do this work.  But we must face the fact that the perpetrators of all this have such certificates.

Is there something about water that just baffles engineers in Venice? They ought to be experts, yet somehow the smallest details are just left unfixed. One might say that the flow of the water and/or the position of the grate of this fountain don’t really HAVE to match up, but then one considers the possibility that the designer was later hired to work on MOSE.

Here’s the headline on September 

MOSE, the gate of the lock at Malamocco has to be redone.

I will translate the main points in this and the following article:

The gate on the lock basin (“conca“) at Malamocco has to be redone.  After the 400 million euros already spent, another 20 million will have to be invested for the “lunata,” the semi-circular breakwater shaped like the moon which protects the ships from waves and current as they position themselves to enter or as they exit.

Here is the inlet between the Adriatic (to the right) and the lagoon (to the left). It’s sort of like two boxers facing off  before the gong. Clockwise from “lunata” we find: The construction yard of the caissons for MOSE, the tiny hamlet of Santa Maria del Mare, the lock to permit shipping to pass when the floodgates are closed in the inlet, the nature park at the Alberoni, the inlet which will be blocked by the raised floodgates in the case of exceptional high tide, and the Alberoni seawall.

The lock, you may recall, was dug to permit the passage of ships between the Adriatic and the lagoon whenever the floodgates are raised.  But evidently every good idea contains the seeds of its own destruction, if you play it right.  It was constructed in 2007 by the Consorzio Venezia Nuova (by means of the mega-company Mantovani) and designed by Technital ten years ago, which Vitucci recalls as  “the golden age of MOSE, when money poured in without limits and without too much control.”  But even then the design was clearly flawed, for which almost everybody involved is now paying the consequences.

Inadequate.  Even though the breakwater extends 1300 meters (4,265 feet), its basin is too small for the latest generation of container ships, making it too risky for the big ships to attempt to enter the lock.  Other than that, the “mobile” parts of the lock — the gates — cannot function because the water exerts too much pressure.  The persons making those calculations might have been interrupted by a phone call, or the arrival of a pizza; anyway, it doesn’t work. This problem was discovered in 2015 when the gate gave way in the first storm.  Urgent interventions are now in the hands of a Belgian company.

But not to worry!  The president of the Magistrato alle Acque, Roberto Linetti, says that fixing it will only cost 18 million euros because the foundations are still good.  And meanwhile, they’ll be able to add a few meters to allow the ships to pass. So you see?  In the end, it was a good thing the gate didn’t work.

Infinite.  Or “unfinished.”  Or “unfinishable,” perhaps.  What now bears the tired title of the “MOSE scandal” consists, as Vitucci lists it, of: “Bribes and consultants, off-the-books payments and always-positive evaluations rendered by friendly experts, extra costs due to the lack of competition and the necessity of accumulating “black” (untraceable) funds to pay the bribes.  But also there have been obvious errors, such as the lock. What was intended to be a structure to prevent penalizing the port activity when the floodgates were up has been shown to be, at the end, the umpteenth useless big project.

Waste.  The lock is far from being the only problem — there are the collateral “major works” connected to MOSE, each one of which is its own little one-act tragedy. The “jack-up,” the large “ship” which cost 50 million euros for transporting and moving the gates constructed by Comar and Mantovani, remains anchored at the Arsenal and has never been used because it doesn’t function, despite the repairs that have been made. There is also the damage to the seawall at San Nicolo’ on the Lido, which collapsed a few days after it had been tested.  Tens of millions of euros thrown into the sea, as Vitucci (and probably many others) puts it.  Damages will need to be paid for all those, too, but it’s not clear by whom.

This is the “jack-up.” Big, expensive, impressive, it makes no pretense of working.

But wait!  There’s more!  Is anyone wondering how the various components are managing to resist encrustation and mold?  I can tell you!  But before I do, pause to marvel at the astonishing presence of salt in seawater, not to mention algae and all sorts of cretures which insist on attaching themselves to things. Who could possibly have known, or even guessed at random, that the Adriatic contains salt and water?

The headline in the Nuova Venezia on September 7, 2017, on a story written by Alberto Vitucci:

Mold and degradation, the MOSE gates are already blocked. 

“Big works = big mafias.” I don’t usually agree with graffiti, but this sums up the situation with admirable clarity.

“The encrustation is increasing; the paint is already old.  And without electricity it’s impossible to raise the barriers.  Mold and degradation in the corridors of the caissons beneath the lagoon.  And the gates, exposed for six months to the weather and salt at Santa Marina del Mare, have to be repainted.

The installations.  The latest problem is the delay in building the electric plant to raise the gates.  MOSE needs energy to raise the gates because it doesn’t exploit the natural energy of the sea and waves.  … Unlike the sequence of events at San Nicolo’, where the power plant was installed first, at Malamocco it was decided to position the gates on the lagoon bottom before the power plant was built.  Result: For several months the gates have lain on the bottom but it’s impossible to test raising them.

Corrosion and fouling. The first inspections revealed corrosion and encrustation.  The lack of electricity has prevented the correct ventilation underwater where the cables and systems pass, not to mention the workers.  The walls are covered with a layer of mold 5 centimeters (2 inches) deep. MOSE is a system conceived to remain underwater, and without maintenance, the problems multiply, such as the corrosion of the hinges (of the gates) that was reported several months ago. What to do? The Consorzio Venezia Nuova announced a competition for bids on the construction of the systems.  Two groups won, the Abb Comes of Taranto and the Abb Idf of Brindisi. But the proposal to realize some temporary systems to move the gates wasn’t approved.  It would have cost 14 million euros, so just let the gates sit underwater, blossoming.

Several months ago, the gates underwater at Treporti began to show accumulations of barnacles, mussels, and crabs — sea-dwelling creatures which were not exactly unknown before the work started.

The paint is peeling. Because there is no electricity or apparatus to install them, the 30 gates that were supposed to be lowered into the water have been waiting for months on the construction site of the caissons.  The delay is due to the non-functioning of the “jack-up.” (Some gates were constructed in Croatia and brought across the Adriatic from Split.)  During these months, the workers have battled the weather and the seagulls, which have begun to nest in the gates, as follows…..

MOSE: Even the seagulls are stripping the paint.

Information from the article by Alberto Vitucci, La Nuova Venezia, 29 April 2017

It turns out that the beached (so to speak) gates sitting at the construction site are a very attractive home for nesting seagulls, sort of like LeFrak City for waterfowl.  But their guano is damaging the paint, and eventually corrodes the metal too.  The birds stab at the peeling paint with their beaks, trying to strip it off (boredom? sport? snacks?).  Protective tarpaulins have been spread over the gates, but large spaces have been left open for work on the hinges, so ….

Bring on the scarecrows! (I mean gulls): Deafening recordings of frightening sounds.  They tried an amped-up donkey braying because an ethologist said that birds are afraid of it.  Birds, sure, but not gulls, who fear almost nothing anymore.  Next, a high-volume dog growling. Nope. In the end, the only thing that works is a cannon firing blanks, so cannonfire is now periodically heard in the lagoon, followed by the wild flapping of hundreds and hundreds of wings of birds that soon return.

How long will all this be going on?

The timetable.  According to the latest schedule — after deadlines passed from 2011 to 2014, then 2017, then 2018 — the work will be finished by 2021.  Four (or five or ten?) more years of astonishing stories to come.  And I haven’t even said anything about the subsidence of the lagoon bottom beneath the caissons due to the powerful force of the tides (tides? there are tides in the sea? what??) which appear to be distorting the position of the gates…..

Life on earth requires many adjustments. Shown here is a reasonable solution to a problem. I have no images of a reasonable solution to any of MOSE’s problems.

 

 

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