MOSE cleaning day/year/decade, and more

October 24, 2024 10 Comments

One morning not long ago I noticed this unusual bit of traffic trundling along toward San Marco and onward to the shipyards at Porto Marghera. This grotty yellow object was instantly recognizable as one of the caissons that form the MOSE floodgate barriers.

As you may recall, they are fixed to the lagoon bottom and raised when needed — “needed” being a word now open to unexpectedly large definition.

More than ten years have passed since this caisson was installed. This is more than enough time for masses of mollusks to attach themselves to the convenient metal surfaces. This fact has been bothering the people in charge for a while, in part because the extra weight the creatures add is a potential problem to the functioning of the caissons. For lovers of statistics, this caisson is 20 meters (65.6 feet) wide, 9 meters (29.5 feet) long, 3 meters (9.8 feet) high, with a total weight of 350 tons.

The MOSE floodgate barriers were raised for the first time on October 3, 2020, to great amazement and jubilation, and have been raised 60 times in the following three years for a total cost of 10 million euros. (That’s what it cost to raise them, not to build them.)

Expensive? Not really, when we now read that cleaning and maintaining them (a process that began last year) is estimated to cost 63 million euros per year. What? It turns out that this is the sum allocated per year for cleaning; if each gate costs one million to clean, and let’s say optimistically that three could be cleaned per year, it’s unlikely those funds will be exhausted any time soon. Unless other problems were to present themselves, of course, which could totally happen.

“Maintenance of MOSE 189 million arriving for three years.” (May 6 2022). That seems to be where 63 million came from; that’s the amount that earmarked for each year. But as we see, that will never be spent per year if only one or two or even — dream on — three gates were cleaned each year.

I can’t keep up with all these numbers. “MOSE: One million to clean each gate” (Jan. 19 2023). That sounds normal, at this point. But that would mean a total of 78 million over the next 26 years. Any financial forecast stretching that far into the future is bound to be fanciful. You see how the pixie dust makes it hard to see anything clearly, much less understand it.

MOSE figures always sound extreme. All these millions of digits fall from myriad bank accounts like cosmic pixie dust on poor old spavined, rumpsprung Venice and its spavined ledgers and reports and endless requests for yet more money.

We are long since accustomed to bulletins involving millions of euros. Here’s one example: “538 million arriving to finish MOSE” (December 3, 2022). It sounds like a lot, but you can be sure it will turn out not to have been enough.

Or this: “MOSE one million in four days to defend Venice” (Nov. 25, 2022). That was an unusual period of frequent high tides, and that was still when “one million” sounded like a lot. By now it sounds like a fire-sale bargain.

“Ten million spent in two years to raise MOSE” (June 29, 2022). Okay wait — in November it cost only one million to raise MOSE four times. So this must mean that in one year it cost five million…no wait, ten million divided by 211,000 (the cost of each raising) is 45 times. But they were raised 60 times. So 60 times 211,000 is 12,660,000. Pixie dust!

But back to the repairs. The caissons languished underwater for 11 years, accumulating crud, until July 5, 2023, when the first of the 78 caissons was taken to the shipyard of Fincantieri in Marghera for spiffing and fixing. So far, though, only three have been cleaned. The work can be done only in the summer because that’s when high water is usually doesn’t occur. At this rate the last gate will go through the process in 2050. Time to start over.

As for cost, Fincantieri has estimated that cleaning and repair will cost more than twice what it cost to build them. Awkward. And of course that number will change, by which I mean increase.

But money well spent, yes? In the three years since the inaugural gate-raising, the barriers have been raised 60 times, for a cost of 10 million euros ($10,850,875). All those digits! Pixie dust!

The “mouths” are clearly visible here; they aren’t all the same width, hence the caissons aren’t all the same size. Bit of not-actually-useless trivia.

This photograph shows the stretch of yellow barriers raised across the northernmost of the three inlets to the lagoon. Each inlet is called a “mouth of the port” (*bocca di* *porto*), and here the “mouth of the Lido” is divided by a constructed island into two sections. The lower is referred to as Treporti and the farther is San Nicolo’. (ytali.it, unattributed image)

Perhaps this detail makes the positions clearer. We are looking south, with the Adriatic on the left.

A recent inspection — the Gazzettino reports — revealed that the condition of the 20 caissons at Treporti is “good.” But inspection has yet to take place on the 21 at San Nicolo’, the 19 at Malamocco, and the 18 at Chioggia. No telling when those inspections will be made, and there’s even less telling as to when action will be taken on whatever is found.

The simoom of pixie dust from the Accounts Payable department also blows from the zone of the jack-up. This is the rig that was built to raise and transport each caisson to the repair shop and back. It cost 53,000,000 euros ($57,000,000). But after years of construction and repairs and what-not, in 2014 it was discovered that the jack-up wasn’t yet ready for work, and it still isn’t, ten years later.

The jack-up has been living its best life for years moored by the Arsenal. At the moment, not only is it not working, it’s in the drydock by the huge crane. I made this picture in 2017. It has remained there since then, on its way to becoming another Venetian monument. In all fairness, it’s clear that if the gates weren’t scheduled to be removed for cleaning, there wasn’t anything for the jack-up to do but sit there, accumulating its own crop of mollusks and algae.

The jack-up in drydock. I took this picture a few days ago. No news about how long it will be there, or what they’re doing, or how much it will cost, or anything.

But not to worry, there is the “Cavaletta” from the Fagioli company that does the same job as the jack-up and costs less. Wait, what?

Here the “Cavaletta” lifts the detached caisson before loading it onto the platform to be towed to the mainland. This construction is ideal for the task at the Lido, but can’t be used at Malamocco because the caissons there are too long for it. So the jack-up will have to be used, whether it’s ready or … not?

When MOSE finally got to work in 2020, the authorities stated that it would be raised when the tide was forecast to reach 140 cm above mean sea level, a category listed as “exceptional” acqua alta. But after the first few times the gates went up and the water in the canals did not even reach the streets, I could sense what was going to happen. And it did.

Nobody wanted water underfoot anymore. So we heard that the gates would be raised when the forecast was for 130 cm maximum height of tide. Then when it was for 120 cm. It has just been lowered yet again to 110 cm. It’s like an auction in reverse — the prize goes to the lowest bidder.

At this point, why not just pump all the water out of the lagoon, and be done with it? Save everybody so much trouble — and money!

But doubts have always been raised, and they continue to be raised, concerning the system’s short- and long-term prospects, the effect on the lagoon, costs (of course), and also how inconveniently illegal these recent gate-raisings at lower tide levels actually are.

To summarize and give some perspective is a letter (translated by me) written on October 10, 2024 by Andreina Zitelli and re-published on ytali.it. I’m leaving the link in case you were to be interested in reading other articles/opinions by her, though they’re mostly in Italian.

“MOSE inadeguato. Come volevasi dimostrare” (MOSE inadequate. As one wanted to demonstrate)

Dear Director,

It emerges clearly from the last meeting of those responsible for its management that the Experimental Electromechanical Module (Mo.S.E.) — not by chance that the opinion of the national Environmental Impact Statement of 1998 was and remains negative — is not the system that can provide for the safeguarding of Venice. Mo.S.E. was designed to block the “exceptional high waters,” not to regulate the lower and medium high tides that progressively invade the urban areas of the islands.

The conflict between the Port and the City was also one of the critical elements at the base of the negative opinion, a conflict, for that matter, stressed also by international experts. Finally, from the environmental point of view the frequent closures are in conflict with the needs of the exchange between the sea and the lagoon. The conflict between Port, City and Lagoon can’t be resolved with Mo.S.E.

As part of the Evaluation Group that expressed the negative opinion of the national Environmental Impact Statement on the Mo.S.E. project, I feel obliged to remind those who today are concerned to safeguard Venice from the high water at or below 100 cm that:

MoS.E. isn’t the system to defend Venice from medium-low and medium-high water;
the height of 110 cm — established by the decisions taken in the political quarters — cannot be regulated by the closing of Mo.S.E. (it was one of the principal reasons for the negative opinion) for the fact that the variability of the phenomenon and the problems of the forecasts cause operative uncertainty;
The model forecast of the 110 cm height falls within a reliable interval of +/- 20 cm from the tide forecast. To shorten the time for deciding (whether to raise the gates or not, N.B.) causes false alarms and leads to discretionary operative decisions, if not even to false closures;
For these reasons it is even more unacceptable to maneuver the Mo.S.E. at tide heights even lower than 110 cm;
The height of 110 cm — as the Opinion put forward — entails such uncertainties as to render useless and damaging for more functional, environnmental and economic aspects, entrust to Mo.S.E. the defense of the City from the medium tides;
the increase in the cases of high water, connected to more frequent tides of low-medium size, aggravates the incompatibility of Mo.S.E. toward the urban, port and environmental object of Safeguarding.
The lagoon is just as complicated as Venice is. Just a thought to ponder.

There is also an aspect that’s hardly secondary to consider.

The quota of 110 cm isn’t part of — as comprehensible also just by common sense beyond the conclusions of the study of the series of the phenomenon — the category “exceptional high water” referred to by the Law 798/84….

The closings of Mo.S.E. that are not aimed at regulating exceptional high water are to be considered against the letter of the law.

Of the discretional use of Mo.S.E. beyond the purpose established by the Law 798/84 the Public Prosecutor of the Financial Court should intervene for the accounting aspects of the extra costs that are certainly not attributable to harmful situations for which is would be possible to make an exception.

I realize MOSE is supposed to help the city, but it isn’t doing anything to help the lagoon.

Further, it should be remembered that Mo.S.E. has not yet demonstrated the capacity to keep up with a real and serious exceptional high tide that could have a catastrophic result, a result that can’t be excluded.

It also remains to consider the difficulty of assuming the decision of closure in the face of extreme weather and tide conditions in the absence of procedures that define the operational limits of the maneuverability and closing of the gates of Mo.S.E. in extreme conditions.

Who will take the responsibility of closing in the absence of a defined procedure?

Other and wider actions and interventions at the territorial level were planned, beginning with the reduction of the depth of the maritime canals and the “mouths of the port,” to realize diffuse urban defenses (as proposed then by Venetian engineers and architects) to join numerous experiments of raising the ground, to regulate the water coming from floods on the mainland.” That is, as everyone knows, many other solutions were proposed to defend the city from acqua alta, but MOSE steamrolled them all.

I could go on, but that’s enough. So let’s conclude that MOSE needs to be cleaned and maintained, nobody can be sure it’s going to keep working if it continues to be raised far more often than predicted, and it will cost craptons of money forever.

A glimpse of the future? I can’t know if this person is being sarcastic or prophetic.

Acqua Alta, MOSE

Anybody remember MOSE?

April 8, 2020 8 Comments

This is the city, so in need of protection and defense.

The division of history into the still-common categories of B.C. and A.D. is rendered in Italian as A.C. and D.C. (not to be confused with electric current or rock bands). It stands for “Avanti Cristo” and “Dopo Cristo” (before and after Christ).

I’m going to propose we keep using A.C. and D.C., but now they’re going to stand for “Avanti Coronavirus” and “Dopo Coronavirus.”

Before Coronavirus, we had problems with tourism (which immediately became problems without tourism). And we had acqua alta. And we had MOSE, and still have MOSE, and will always have MOSE till eternity has been reduced to the nucleus of the hydrogen atom and is extinguished.

To recap: Acqua alta is something that happens. It can be extreme, and sometimes extremely damaging. So it was decided, after the still-champion event of November 4, 1966, that the solution would be barriers composed of mobile “gates” that would be raised to block the water’s entrance into the lagoon, a/k/a Venice. (I make that distinction because the MOSE people don’t care about the lagoon — it is being built to protect the city. The damage that this construction has done and continues to do to the lagoon isn’t mentioned by the MOSE people, but it remains nevertheless.)

This is the lagoon, equally in need of protection and defense. At dawn on a muggy morning in June, Lino is clamming, the tide is going out, and life is beautiful. You’d never know that a world-class city was so close yet so detached.

How are things going? Well, about as usual, which means moving ahead by fits and starts, badly and expensively. This form of progress attracted notice from time to time until the catastrophic acqua alta on November 12, 2019 that simultaneously drowned and battered the city. The morning after was full of wailing, as you would expect, and among those wails were angry voices saying that if MOSE had ever been finished on time (like, at least ten years ago) and in working order (this will always be doubtful), the city would not have suffered this appalling disaster. The rough translation would be “Hey — those floodgates you all have been blowing smoke about for the last 30 years? This is EXACTLY the situation they were intended to protect us from. So where the f*#k are they already?”

Quick reply: “We’re on it! June! They’ll be done in June!”

So, good news: Being a major public work, its construction has not been blocked by the quarantine, though health security for the workers –staying at least one meter apart, in a tunnel under the water — is not easy. And at the Lido/San Nicolo’ site, they don’t have protective gear at all. But on we go.

Did I say “June 30”? That’s when the installations are supposed to be complete. Will they be working? Unlikely. They’re not going to be declared fully functional, ready for prime time, let’s cut the ribbon, until December 31, 2021. The mayor is livid, and has generally made it known to the administrative body, the Consorzio Venezia Nuova (CVN), that this fall Venice is going to be facing high water again, and the gates better the f*#k be ready by then.

You know what’s coming next: Money. We have none, and yet rivers of money keep flowing to all sorts of offices and individuals. One million euros have been spent so far on the “super-commissioner” assigned to oversee MOSE with her office/staff (engineers, lawyers, tech wizard, press officer).

Money also has to be found to pay the salaries of the 250 employees of the CVN and two associated entities. And money has to be found to repair the many problems on the construction up till now, including modifying the special basin to allow ships to enter at Malamocco if the gates are raised. The current basin, which cost 360,000,000 euros, not only was damaged by a storm in 2015, but has been found to be too small.

Yes indeed, there is still more: The original project plan stipulated that the 78 gates have to be replaced every five years (five years after they begin working). But there are gates that have already been lying underwater for more than five years — in the case of the ones at San Nicolo’-Treporti, since 2013.

But before replacement, there must be maintenance: cleaning, scraping off the heavy encrustations of barnacles and other clingy creatures, probably tasks aimed at gears and hydraulics, checking the condition of the tubes that carry the compressed air that powers the raising of the gates, etc. The cost of maintenance? Now projected to be 100,000,000 euros per year. No, wait — it actually says “at least 100,000,000 a year.”

The news today reported that 40,000,000 euros have arrived in the city’s coffers of the 84,000,000 earmarked by the state to repair November’s devastation to the city and pay indemnities to businesses damaged by the acqua alta. This is excellent news and comes none too soon, but then I look at the numbers. It costs more to maintain the gates than it does to repair the city?

Now we hear about the cost of the consultants. I suppose every project has consultants, though it’s not clear to me why, if you’ve already got professionals on the job in every category, you need to hire more. A list was published in the Gazzettino on April 2 detailing monies spent in 2014 and 2019 in three areas: Administrative, Legal, and Technical. “Administrative” includes three (3) special administrators paid 240,000 euros each.

In 2019, what with one thing and another, 3,000,000 euros were spent on consultants. And about 2,000,000 of those were spent on lawyers. So many things have gone wrong for so long that evidently you couldn’t have too many, and they all cost money. One lawyer was paid 900,000 euros (admittedly he had plenty to do; he was employed by the Consorzio, which was batting away lawsuits from suppliers and other offended parties like King Kong fighting the airplanes).

I may have said this before, but it’s worth repeating: MOSE was supposed to save the city, but looking at these numbers, I’m beginning to think that somebody needs to save the city from MOSE.

MOSE

MOSE: It’s just money

January 14, 2018 1 Comment

By this point, the mechanics and components of MOSE could only be interesting to engineers, and maybe not even to them. So here are some pictures of the lagoon which do not show it at as the monstrous adversary against which Venice must be defended at all costs (“all costs” will be broken down below).

It’s not that I want to talk about MOSE any more than I want to gnaw off a hangnail, but it’s not my fault if wondrous developments continue to pop up in the endless saga of this undertaking. And even if you are not a connoisseur of wondrousness (wondrosity?) in bloated public works, there may be a few people left who still are interested in how this thing is getting along. By which I mean those people who used to ask me about it with such eagerness and curiosity and goodwill and hopefulness, seeing that until just a few years ago the Destiny of Venice was trumpeted by the press to be hand- and leg-cuffed to the success or failure of this … thing.

One recalls that the most recent date projected for finishing its construction (and beginning the TWO-YEAR TESTING) was the end of 2018. But brace yourselves: It’s going to be later. They say that the conclusion will be January 1, 2019. Or when the cassowaries return to Capistrano. Or when Jesus comes back. Everything depends on everything else, which is a fancy way of saying “money.”

“Creation of the animals,” by Tintoretto (c. 1550). It could be my imagination, but I detect a resemblance to the teeming Venetian lagoon here, which I suspect was not accidental.

Here is a rundown of the situation as outlined by Roberto Linetti (Interregional Superintendent of Public Works) to the city councilors a few days ago:

The job needs more money. (I can’t comment on that anymore; it’s like saying the sun needs to come up tomorrow.) It needs 221 million euros — as do we all — to finance the completion of 60 remaining aspects of the project, 40 of which must be finished this year. Only 40 million euros have been released from the total allotment so far, and the rapport between work done and payments made is not encouraging.

“The construction sites are not going well,” Mr. Linetti admitted. Everything is slowing down because the private companies have slowed down, which they’ve done because of the financial and legal Gordianosities of the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, the former governing consortium, and its collapse under the weight of its financial skulduggery. The companies have slowed down on working because payments due them are arriving even more slowly. “If the private companies aren’t motivated to go ahead,” said Linetti, “it’s hard to make them go ahead, even by kicking them.”

But every day that the construction is stalled, the underwater parts are deteriorating, which will only require more expenditure down the line. It’s a situation that brings to mind the notion that “We can’t stop fighting because otherwise our boys would have died for nothing.”

The MOSE annual budget also earmarks 15 million euros for caring for the lagoon (in unspecified ways). Considering how much damage to the lagoon the whole project is causing, that seems fair. Sort of. Nice they remember there is a lagoon.

Projected cost of administration and maintenance. This is a big one, which few people paid much attention to in the giddy days of selling contracts and all.

“We think that the administration of MOSE will cost about 80 million euros a year,” Linetti told the city councilors. “And that’s not much for a work of this importance and complexity in an area like Venice, considering that between 20-30 million are solely the cost of the utilities for the system’s functioning. Between 15-20 million euros a year will be for personnel, at least 100 of them. Then there are 30-40 million for the maintenance itself,” including the undefined work in the lagoon. Let me repeat that: The maintenance work itself will cost 30-40 million euros a year. “The State surely won’t fail to maintain its support.”

The maintenance work will be undertaken in the Arsenal, where the gates will periodically be brought to be cleaned, stripped and revarnished. Naturally a new hangar will have to be constructed for this work, which will cost 18 million. There are more zero’s swarming around the MOSE accounts than there are mosquitoes on Sant’ Erasmo at sunset in July.

Let the swans go live somewhere else, we’re busy operating big machinery and big bookkeeping programs.

And the use of the gates? The news is now that to protect Venice from exceptional high tide, it will probably be necessary to raise only the gates at the inlet at San Nicolo on the Lido, leaving the gates at Malamocco and Chioggia peacefully reposing underwater.

“The experts have verified,” said Linetti, “that closing only the inlet at the Lido will result in a significant lowering of the level of the tide in the historic center, without the necessity of closing the entire system.” So all that work and expense to build gates at all three inlets was…….pointless?

In fact, knowing that the Lido gates would be used the most frequently was the reason, according to Linetti, why more “materials” were dedicated to the construction there. And therefore, he says, “There will be a saving on the costs of maintenance.”

He has now totally lost me. Where do these savings on maintenance come from? On the gates that will be used more often (theoretically), or those which therefore will be used less? I could take high-powered binoculars and I still don’t see savings anywhere. At this point I’m not even sure what savings look like.

(I am indebted to the excellent reporting of Enrico Tantucci in La Nuova Venezia of 10 January 2018.)

MOSE, Problems

MOSE again, still, forever

September 13, 2017 4 Comments

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 7, 2017 from the story in La Nuova Venezia by Alberto Vitucci:

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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