After my post on dredging (which was far too long ago, I apologize), I’m attempting a return with some answers to the question several readers put to me: What happens to the mud that is dredged from the canals?
Bear in mind that Venice has dredged its canals many times over the centuries and deposited the mud somewhere it could be useful. For example, the island of Sacca Sessola was created from 1860-1870 with the mud dredged from the area of Santa Marta during the deepening of the canals of the maritime zone. And it is far from being the only one.
Small digression: “Sacca” (saca in Venetian) is often used to identify such places, but don’t confuse it with sacco, which means “bag.” A sacca is defined as “an inlet or cove of the sea, lake, river, or more precisely the bottom of an inlet or gulf. In geography, the accumulation of brackish water, very shallow, that is formed in sandy areas that separate the branches of a delta, from the resurgence of seawater from the subsoil.” End of digression.
Murano, a natural grouping of lagoon islands, has been amplified with dredgings over the years; if you look at Google Maps (satellite view) you can easily locate Sacca Serenella, a sort of industrial zone to which no tourist would be lured. Murano has also grown on its northern perimeter by the addition of yet another island, mostly barren at the moment, where the Centro Sportivo San Mattia is located.
The cemetery island of San Michele has undergone quite an expansion over the past few years, thanks to dredgings from the city and environs. Puts a perfect, if slightly queasy, spin on the old “dust to dust” trope. I wonder if you could specify in your will that you want to be buried in the mud dug up from the canal nearest to your home.
When there is a large quantity of mud to be deposited, it is sprayed from enormous barges through high-powered tubes, specifically to form new barene (marshy islands). This process was quite a spectacle for a while during the construction of the “Vento di Venezia” marina at the island of the Certosa.
Unhappily, sometimes the mud is poison. I’m not picking on Murano, but canals near the glass furnaces are known to contain arsenic and a few other chemicals not conducive to health. The sediments along the lagoon edge by the Industrial Zone are loaded with heavy metals — pick your favorite, it will be there. Sometimes illegal clammers go there at night, sell the clams, they’re sold to restaurants, etc. You can imagine.
Because the provenance of the mud matters, there is a system by which it is analyzed and classified and, if necessary, treated to render it harmless. This is more than usually important if it’s being sold to farmers to enrich their fields. I haven’t researched the system(s), so please don’t ask me. The point is that they exist.
The mud of Venice. You probably wouldn’t call it poetic, but it’s just as important as the water.
This day is commonly observed here by means of sprays of mimosa. I’ve written about this before.
Today, in addition to the mimosa, we had a 24-hour transit strike (busses, trams, trains, and of course vaporettos). This is some sort of inexplicable sub-tradition, because Women’s Day has been disfigured by a transit strike more than once. Some vaporettos will run, but it will be a task to reorganize your day to accommodate the ACTV, the public transport company. If this strike were to accomplish something, I’d be so glad. But it seems a feeble reed to wield in the struggles that women live through every day, up to and including their struggles with the ACTV.
The ACTV has a hundred reasons for calling strikes; we have one every few months. They are mostly politically motivated and are usually directed at lapses in administration. Work problems, not human problems. This year they’ve decided to take every social problem yet identified and load them onto a highly worthy cause and, you know, let the women carry it.
So the ACTV demonstrates its sensitivity to the problems of women in Venice, the nation, the world, by creating problems for women. Transport strikes absolutely mangle your day in a city with basically two alternatives — feet and taxis. Let’s say you have to accompany your sick neighbor to the hospital for her radiation therapy today. During a strike last year we walked to the only functioning vaporetto stop, much farther than the usual stop, and took the sole working vaporetto two stops to San Zaccaria, where they put everybody ashore. Then we had to walk inland, streets, bridges, streets, bridges, to get to the hospital under our own fading steam. She was so frail by then, but such a trouper.
When the next strike rolled around she could hardly walk to the corner anymore, so we had to take a taxi — that will be 50 euros (rate from her house to the hospital). And 50 euros back, naturally. Her pension was 750 a month. But sure, the ACTV’s union disagreements come first.
So just work your way around the strike however you can, or can’t. Kids going to school? Get them up at 4:00. (Made up, but not by much.) Going to your job, or your second job, today? Call to say you can’t make it and lose the day’s pay. Or walk. Be sure to consult the labyrinthine schedule of the times and routes of the limited service, or just decide to stay home.
So thank you, ACTV, for acknowledging all the problems that ought not to exist in a woman’s world. I don’t see you on the list, though.
It’s not just the buildings — even the canals are getting big repairs.
There are roughly 150 canals in Venice, which might sound like a lot, though you probably have many more streets where you live. But whatever they’re made of, streets require maintenance. And often — make that quite often, in Venice — maintenance is conducted only when it has become absolutely necessary.
Canal-beds here are made of mud, and the movement of the tides, plus the thrashing of motorboat propellers night and day, tend to make the mud move around. Sometimes the waves (underwater force of) push it to the sides of the canal where it accumulates, blocking any drains that might be emptying from buildings; the blockage causes the material to build up and over time the chemicals in the material damage the building’s walls. So the mud has been transformed from a water problem to a land problem, and sometimes is the signal that it’s really time to deal with it.
Or the the mud swirls around, carried by the water to wherever the force of the waves diminishes, at which point it eventually drifts downward and is deposited on the bottom. When this process reaches the point where there is no longer enough useful average depth to the water, the dredgers are called in. Just think: High water means that many boats can’t pass under certain bridges until the tide turns, but low water can mean that boats can’t pass at all, bridges or not. This is not a happy situation if the boat in question is an ambulance, or belongs to the firemen. So yes. In your town your roads have potholes. Here we have mud.
They were as good as their word: On December 17, they departed, and on 19 we rowed our little boat back to its mooring. When the weather is cold, the water is usually extremely clear, and I can tell you that we could see the bottom of the canal by the wall, and it was definitely deeper. Of course, as always, we’d have to measure it at low tide to know how much deeper it was, compared to two months ago (at low tide). But keeping in mind that now, and for the next month, the lagoon is prone to exceptional low tides, that would also be deceptive.
But the saga continues; dredging is far from over. Via Garibaldi is a rio tera’ — “earthed-in canal” — but not literally filled in, as you might have innocently imagined, because a large culvert was installed beneath the pavement to allow the tidal flux to continue its useful work of fluxing. And over the years the tide had deposited mud in this culvert, too. A filled-in culvert is just as bad as a clogged-up canal.
Conclusion: Considering a new career? Give some thought to dredging Venice. Just regard it as the Humber Canal of cities.
To anyone who has ever looked at a bit of crumbling Venice and said, or even thought, “They really ought to fix that,” this is your moment. But if you were to have considered coming here now to see Venice, let me warn you that you’ll be seeing square miles of scaffolding and tarpaulin.
I was fascinated by all this happening so suddenly (or at all), and believe me, at a certain point I stopped taking pictures because there’s no need to publish literally a thousand photos of scaffolding and tarpaulin. But why is it happening now? Like so many questions, the answer is lying at, or not far from, some point involving money because, apart from the cost of the work, there is a phenomenal daily cost merely for the scaffolding. As I understand it, the cost is imposed because the metal towers are occupying public space (think cafe tables inching out into the street), and said occupation comes at a price. Perhaps this is true in the whole world, but because we’re here, I risk invoking my one-size-fits-all explanation: ThisisVenicewheremoneyisking.
For confirmation, I went to Lino, as I always do, and he answered my question with two words: “Bonus casa.” (As I said: Money.) Here is how it works and why everything is happening now, translated by me from a well-informed website. “Extension till December 31, 2021 also for the deduction from personal income tax (Irpef) of 50 percent of the expenses sustained for interventions of building recovery, also known as ‘bonus casa’ or ‘bonus renovation.’ With a maximum limit of 96,000 euros for each unit of real estate.” Fun fact: There is an assortment of additional bonuses for a variety of housing improvements from improving energy efficiency to windows to installation of solar panels to street-facing facades to adding or maintaining “green areas.” There is much more, but you get the idea.
So I’m absolutely correct in supposing that everybody woke up with a start one morning yelling “OMG I’ve got to get started on redoing the entire building today!”
I’m not saying you should bring a hard hat to wear over your woolen watch cap. Just saying that work is booming. Nice, when you think about it. Only slightly less nice when they’re drilling, hammering, sawing, scraping, sanding and yelling next to your bedroom window. And the dust, of course. Now I know why I haven’t dusted the house since spring; I must have sensed that this was coming up. Life is still so far from perfection….