Watching the various weather signs yesterday morning as closely as a jungle tracker (or desert tracker, or suburban mother looking for a parking place at the mall), I realized fairly early that the Warnings which I was following were turning out to have been perhaps slightly excessive.
Caution is a superb thing and we should all have more of it, except for when we shouldn’t, I mean. But I have the sensation — and so does Lino — that a certain amount of exaggeration has crept into the whole business of predicting acqua alta. Why?
This is what water announced by the siren plus one tone looked like at 11:30 outside our house. The tide was just about ready to turn.
One reason, and I’m just hypothesizing here, could be that the people in the Tide Center (particularly its battle-hardened director, Paolo Canestrelli, who would feel perfectly at home with Field Marshal Montgomery) are up to here with the shrieking imprecations from people inconvenienced by a change in the situation from the earlier prediction to the reality suddenly underfoot.
As I have already noted, the weather picture can change. Get over it.
Another reason — here, let me move that firing-range target to the side and stand there in its place — could be the relentless need for the many forces involved in the MOSE project to instill public dread of water on the ground. Even brief articles in the Gazzettino which mention a (not “the,” but “a”) possibility of high water the following day don’t bear down too hard on the word “possibility.” They like the effect the words “acqua alta” have on people, if put in a way that makes it sound as if you need to head for the storm cellar.
Acqua alta is always very clear.
In any case, just remember that any article that you may read that implies, or even says, that “Venice was flooded” is a bit excessive. We didn’t get any water on our ground and we’re in Venice. Is San Marco’s high water better than ours? Prettier? Wetter?
If you have any interest in the damage water can seriously do to people, places and things, don’t get fixated on Venice, but look at other areas of the Veneto such as Vicenza and Verona, and even in Tuscany, over the past few days. Torrential rains, bursting riverbanks, highways and roads blocked and even broken by racing water, mudslides obliterating houses and the helpless people within them (like the mother and her two-year-old son whose bodies were dug out of their mud-filled house, still clinging to each other) — these are events involving water which deserve more publicity than they get.
Actually, “mudslide” is too innocuous a word for what happened in Tuscany after days of rain. Essentially a huge chunk of melting mountain just broke off and fell on this family’s house. Just like that. No warning sirens, no time to do anything except die. There are many families who have lost everything. Some people have drowned.
Parts of the Veneto have now been declared disaster areas. Venice was not on the list.
I’m sitting here at 7:30 waiting to see what the water is going to do.
This is not the first time this fall that water has come ashore (as it probably will), but it’s the first time I’m taking it slightly more seriously — and by “seriously” I don’t mean I’m pulling the tarps off the lifeboats preparing to abandon ship, so to speak; I mean that I believe that the official prediction may be close to accurate. That alone would be worth writing about.
The accuracy is interesting only for the same reasons that any weather prediction is interesting — Did they get it right? And does this mean I should take future predictions really seriously?
There are several indications that they may be onto something this morning, most of which do not require their intervention because I have the tools at hand to understand and evaluate the probabilities all by my big-girl self.
On an ideal day, the hand would be pointing in the opposite direction.
First, the barometric pressure. It has been impressively low for the last 12 hours, if not more. Low pressure means high water, a rule so simple even I can remember it.
Checking the barometer is one of the first useful things to do, and this is what impressive low pressure looks like. Note that whoever put those generic terms on the instrument’s face (“fair,” “change,” “rain”) didn’t consider putting “impressive high water” in the lower right-hand space. But that’s okay, because depending on where you live they would more usefully have had to put “monsoon,” “tropical cyclone” and other events not likely to occur here. So never mind.
Second, the wind direction. The garbin (gar-BEAN) was blowing strongly from the southwest yesterday afternoon, which is good because it impels the water to move northeast, or out into the Adriatic where it can do whatever the heck it wants to. Then it veered around to the north — even better.
But now it has veered to a scirocco, or southeast wind, which has the opposite effect of pressing the water into the lagoon, as I rustically think of it — or at least of creating enough force to block the tide’s normal retreat.
Third, we are now on the verge of the 24-hour period of the “morto de aqua,” or “death of the water,” when the tidal variation is minimal. This 24-hour period falls twice a month and doesn’t particularly influence the height of the high tide, but it does mean that since the tides are not especially strong, the weather is almost always unstable. Which means don’t count on anything except some kind of unpleasant weather. In the summer we can get huge thunderstorms during the “morto de aqua.”
If I had a shop near the Piazza San Marco and didn’t know any of the above, instead of wailing to the city about paying me for the damage or inconvenience I had suffered, I ought to be paying them for my preposterous ignorance. Hm — that would be an entertaining project: Setting a scale of penalty payments for preposterous ignorance. The mind absolutely sparkles at the thought.
Fourth, if you don’t know any of the above three basic facts of life in the lagoon, you can decide to depend on the city’s system of warning sirens, which sound an hour before water is expected to start rising through the drain system. If you live more than an hour away from San Marco, of course, this system doesn’t do you much good.
Or you might go online and consult the prediction from the city’s Centro Maree, or Tide Center.
It’s interesting to see the variation between the normal tidal flux (the lower, light red line) and the real-time prediction (upper blue line). The only problem with this tool is that its usefulness depends heavily on being updated in a timely fashion.
The forecast hasn't changed since last night, but it would have been nice to have seen it before 7:28 AM.
Really timely updates are available through the text-messaging system. However, if you have signed up with the Tide Center to get the prediction via your cell phone, you still might want to consider a fall-back position. A few days ago the Gazzettino reported that thousands of users had indeed received the necessary warning, but only several hours too late. The city blamed the mobile phone company and its incapacity to send thousands of simultaneous text messages. (Oh good — something even less dependable than weather predictions: cell phone efficiency). The city has since — they say — changed companies.
I have not signed up with this service because, well, we’ve got the barometer, which is incapable of lying and doesn’t depend on any human agent whatsoever. What a scintillating thought that is.
Update: The sirens have just sounded. And instead of the two tones which “code orange” would require, there was only one tone, meaning the maximum ought to be a mere 110 cm (43 inches)above normal sea level, not the earlier prediction of 115 cm (45 inches). This doesn’t mean they were wrong, it just means that something changed. Whatever it was, I’m for it. Two inches makes an inordinate amount of difference..
Blessedly, there is an antidote to the histrionics of the racing world, and it is composed of the assorted boating events strung across the calendar which are conducted by us plain folks.
One of the roadies helping to organize the start.
One of the prettiest, for the rowers, at least, is called the “Riviera Fiorita,” or “flowered riviera,” which consists, among many other events, a boat procession (“corteo“) which meanders down the Brenta Canal from Stra to the lagoon over the course of one long and (one prays) sunny day — usually the second Sunday in September. Participation is optional, so the number of boats and rowers can vary, but some years have seen nearly a hundred boats.
Two weeks ago was the 33rd edition of this event, which means that by now many of the participants have long since forgotten two of its basic motives, if they ever knew them in the first place.
One, that it was conceived in order to draw attention to the calamitous condition of this attractive and very historic little waterway, which till then was known primarily (and still is) for the ranks of Renaissance villas standing along its banks. There are anywhere between 40 and 70 of these extraordinary dwellings, depending on what source you’re reading; plenty, in any case.
Back in 1977, in the attempt to rally the public to the aid of this stretch of former Venetian territory, a few local organizations engaged a number of the fancy “bissone” and their costumed rowers from Venice in the hope of drawing some spectators, raising awareness and concern for the river’s plight, and so on. As you see, the plan worked.
Second, that the event is intended to recall (“evoke” would be impossible for anyone today even to imagine, much less pay for) the corteo which was held in July of 1574 to welcome Henry III, imminent King of France, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, on his approach to Venice.
Henry’s visit inspired all sorts of memorable incidents; every time you’re reading about the 16th century hereabouts, he keeps turning up. The magnificence of the entertainment provided by all and sundry over the week he spent in the Doge’s territory makes it a little hard to remember that the basic purpose of his visit was to ask the Doge to lend him 100,000 scudi, without interest. Next time you want your buddy to spot you a twenty, see what happens if you ask him to organize a boat procession in your honor. And a couple of masked balls,while you’re at it. But then, your buddy probably isn’t the only thing standing between you and the Spanish Empire.
Then this thought crosses my mind: If the Doge had had any notion that some two centuries later the republic would be ravaged, wrecked, and exterminated by a Frenchman, maybe he would have thought twice about lending him the money and giving all those parties. One of countless useless afterthoughts gathering dust in my brain.
The Brenta in its natural state, descending the Valsugana at a brisk clip. Here at Valstagna the water of the spring-fed Oliero River pushes its way in. You can see why modifications to this waterway needed to be made by the people living on the plain.
So why is there a Brenta Canal (“Naviglio del Brenta”) when there’s a perfectly good Brenta River? Because the river, which springs from the lake of Caldonazzo in the foothills of the Alps near Trento, and wends 108 miles (174 km) southeastward till it reaches the Venetian lagoon, is too unruly and too silt-laden to have been permitted to continue its traditional path to the sea which was, in fact, the Grand Canal.
A clear rendition of the cut the Venetians made at Stra in the natural eastward path of the Brenta, sending the major flow southeast and out to sea.Thereby creating an ideal waterway for easily moving goods, people, and anything else between Padova (Padua) and Venice. And providing a marvelous setting for beautiful country houses.
The Venetians had been fiddling with the river’s course since the 1330’s, and by the 17th century had diverted the main river south, to debouch into the Adriatic at Brondolo, leaving a more docile little arm of the river, plus several crucial locks, to use as a direct connection between Venice and Padua. It was perfect for the transporting of all sorts of cargo in barges towed by horses, some of which cargo included patrician Venetian families with lots of their furniture shifting to their summer houses/farms for as much as six months of partying.
Two versions of the "Burchiello" in 1711, which carried patrician families upriver to their country estates. The boat obviously could be rowed as well as towed. (Credit: Gilberto Penzo)
That’s the short version.
This waterway has now come to style itself the Riviera del Brenta, sucking up new streams of tourism by promoting its amazing collection of villas. These vary in size and splendor, from the monumental Villa Pisani at Stra (yearning to matchVersailles, or at least Blenheim) to many elegant and winsome mansions — my favorite, the Villa Badoer Fattoretto — down to a ragged assortment of deteriorating properties whose history deserves something better than what they’ve been doomed to suffer.
These are just some of the boats at Stra being readied for the corteo. A few of the fancy "bissone," and a very workaday red caorlina.
The boats, fancy or otherwise, were towed upstream from Venice on Saturday. Sunday morning we took the bus to Stra, where we joined the throngs getting themselves and their boats ready to depart. We were on a slim little mascareta, just the two of us. At about 10:00 (translation: oh, 10:30) the procession moved out.
The sun was shining, the air was cool, the spectators were happy, and I was feeling pretty good myself. We had 17 miles (27.3 km) to go, but by now I knew what the stages would be, so I was prepared not only for the effort of rowing (not much) and the effort of not rowing (strenuous).
The prow of a bissona, nuzzling the shrubbery.Lino spiffing up the mascareta before we all get moving.Bissone milling around. The trumpeters aboard the mother ship, the "Serenissima," will be providing the occasional fanfare. Here they are taking on passengers also dressed in 18th-century garb. They're going to be very hot in all that velvet before long.Waiting around isn't too bad, no matter what hat you're wearing, if it doesn't go on too long. This man is one of hundreds of costumed passengers who provide atmosphere.
And we're off!
“Not rowing”? What do I mean? If we were to row at top speed, bearing in mind that we’re going with the current — slight as it may be — we could theoretically make the trip in three hours. But speed isn’t the point, and there is also the factor of those three pesky locks and three pesky revolving bridges we to have to pass through. As in: Wait to be opened for us to pass through. Wait for everyone else to catch up so we can all get moving as a group again. No stringing out the procession, it loses all its charm if we’re not together.
We start cheek by jowl with the Villa Pisani. This is how it looks to the people ashore.And this how it looks to us, taking the boat's-eye view.
Here’s what I love about this event: The families clustered along the shore just outside their gardens, where picnic/barbecues are in full swing. I made a game of counting the number of houses we passed from which the perfumed smoke of ribs grilling over charcoal was billowing. When I got to five I gave up, because I knew I wasn’t going to be getting any and it just made me hungry.
Kids, dogs, people on bicycles, babies, fishermen, little old ladies — they’re watching us but I think they’re hundreds of times more fun.
People clapping just because we're rowing? What a great idea for a day out.
Our first lock. Couldn't fit anybody else in, but there are at least three more lock-loads of boats that have to come through. So they wait for all the water to be released, for us to row out, and for the lock to fill up again. Takes time. People get cranky.Almost down to the level of the next stretch of river. The boats along the sides have to attach a rope to hang onto as we descend.Time for a break, sandwiches and water provided. Whether you're hungry or thirsty or have to go to the bathroom OR NOT, the boats in the lead (and the biggest) block the river. This forces the by-now somewhat strung-out corteo to bunch up. It looks better. So we hit the "pause" button on our progress one more time.So here we are, duly bunched up, on the road again.You can't smell the ribs on the barbecue, but they're just behind those trees. People can be so cruel.Lunchtime at last. We all stop at the Villa Contarini dei Leoni at Mira, where doge Alvise I Mocenigo met Henry III on his approach to Venice. A simpler welcome today: Hot food for hot rowers. No silver salvers, though. Or doges.The garden is lovely. What the set-up may lack in charm it makes up for in efficiency. That's no small feat around here.This bunch brought their own vittles. I have no idea where or what the "Comune de Pan e Vin" (commune of bread and wine) might be, but it's clear that its members regard rowing as an amusing sideline to the real entertainment in life.A caorlina from the boat club at Cavallino-Treporti, an area which is still at least partly farmland. They are clearly faithful to their agricultural roots, what with the festoons of eggplant and bell peppers and all, down to the chili-pepper belt the first rower improvised. After lunch, the day does begin to drag somewhat.Enlivened by one of the swing bridges which we all have to pass through in some kind of orderly manner. Now it's the cars who have to wait. Nice.Applause and cheers are always appreciated, but my thoughts are beginning to wander from the adoration of the masses to getting home and taking a shower.
Here’s what else I love: Passing the Villa Foscari “La Malcontenta.” Not only is its elegance and repose something especially beautiful when we pass in the dwindling afternoon, when the sun begins to descend and the light warms to honey and amber. Reaching this emerald curve also means we’re almost at the end, an idea which is gaining appeal with every bend in the channel.
The Villa Foscari "La Malcontenta," one of the most beautiful buildings on earth. I think the partial screen of willows increases the allure.
Here’s what I don’t love: The aforementioned locks and bridges, not in themselves but because of the sort of frenzy that overtakes people trying to squeeze their boat in when there obviously isn’t enough space for a toothpick. They start to get tired and cranky, and maybe they’ve had one or two glasses of wine (it could happen) and so these little solar flares of emotion begin to overheat my own sense of benevolence toward my fellow man.
Moranzani, the last lock. We are in pole position to get in as soon as the gates open. It's past 6:00 PM and at this point everybody wants to be first.
Here’s what I especially don’t love: Wind in the lagoon. It has happened more than once that by the time we were leaving the river at Fusina and heading into open water, we were facing a wall of wind. Which brings waves. Which means just when you really want it all to be over, you have to seriously get to work rowing.
In 2001 — a date branded into my brain — there was so much weather that the trip to the Lido in the 8-oar gondolone which normally would take an hour took three times that long. Doesn’t sound so bad? Maybe not now, but we had no idea when it was going to end, if ever, as we were struggling through the tumult, crashing along, the boat stopping every time we went into the trough between the waves, of which there were many. I also lost my oar overboard. Having to retrace lots of waves we’d just conquered in order to recover it is not a memory I revisit with any pleasure.
You might think that this kind of experience would really build your muscle mass, and I suppose it does. I counted several whimpering new ones the morning after. But what it really toughens up is your mental mass. Mental stamina, some level of fortitude you never needed till now. Plain old grit. You’re out there and suddenly realize you’ve completely run out of the stuff and you’re still not home? You’ve got to make more grit right there. There is no alternative.
One of those nights we were rowing back (it’s always getting dark in these return voyages, which adds to the dramatic element) in the six-oar caorlina with four teenagers who hadn’t done much rowing. I was in the bow, so I couldn’t see anything but night ahead of me. Rowing, rowing… It felt like we were rowing in a sea of cement, pushing against a brick wall. And as I rowed, I gave myself comfort in the only way I could: Swearing a series of oaths in my mind, more sincerely than any juror with both hands on the Bible, oaths which I fully intended to voice to Lino whenever we made it to shore, and calling on the angels, prophets and martyrs as my witnesses, as follows:
“Forget my name. This is the last time. I’m never doing this again. This is insane. I hate this. Why am I here? What was I thinking? Forget my name. This is the last time…..”
I can’t remember how long ago that was, and well, I’m still doing it. So much for my oaths, and I think my witnesses have all gone home.
But this year the return row was heavenly. We were towed, with ten other boats, from the last lock at Moranzani out into the lagoon. When we got as far as the Giudecca, at about 7:45 PM, we untied our little mascareta from the others and rowed through the darkness back to the Remiera Casteo, at Sant’ Elena. The other end of Venice, in other words.
The lagoon is always beautiful, and even more so when you're heading home.
I love rowing at night. The sky gleams like black onyx and the darkness somehow makes it feel like you’re going really fast. There is almost no traffic (it’s not summer anymore, thank God) so the water is smooth and silky. It’s dreamy.
Then we had to cross the San Marco canal– sorry, dream over. There’s less traffic at 8:30 at night, but there are still waves, spawned by an assortment of vaporettos and the ferryboat and some random taxis, none of whom is likely to be looking out for any stray mascareta. Yes, we had a light. No, it wasn’t a floodlight. This created enough tension to inspire me to speed up. and we briskly made it across in only a few minutes.
Home free. And very sorry it was all over. And very ready to shut the door on today and turn on the shower. Boats are great but 12 hours in one is plenty.
Having reviewed the barest basics of acqua alta, and the barest technical outlines of the “floodgate” project intended to keep Venice as dry as the Nebraska Sand Hills, I’d better warn you that not everybody is on board.
“This is a way of funneling a huge amount of money to business allies of the government,” a city councilor told TheChristian Science Monitor last year. “There are better alternatives but they were never considered. There is a big question mark over whether it will really work.”
So has anybody spoken up? Only thousands of people. The project been protested, sued against, blocked and stalled in all sorts of ways for 30 years (yes: it’s taken three decades to get this thing to where it is today), and even now the arguments pro and con continue to be lobbed back and forth between the opposing believers.
Construction proceeds at the inlet at San Nicolo, the one closest to Venice. The artificial island in the middle, built to accommodate construction equipment, has already affected the tidal flows. It will not be dismantled.
There have been a few times when it appeared that perhaps the project would be annulled for various reasons: lack of money, the bizarre absence of the required Environmental Impact Statement, legal loopholes that kept being found and then quickly closed. But nothing has been able to stop its implacable progression toward completion. It’s like throwing gravel at the Kraken.
By the end of 2009, despite all the myriad stops, starts, and slowdowns, 63 percent of the project had been completed. There isn’t enough money to restore historic palaces and churches which are visible every day, but somehow money has been found to block exceptional high water, an event which might occur four to seven times a year. Or maybe not at all. You may have noticed that the weather is not operated by the Swiss railway system.
But doesn’t everybody in Venice want to save their city from the sea?
In a word: No. At least not everybody in Venice wants this to be the way to tame the tides. In fact, it is difficult to find anyone who is not directly benefiting from the project who thinks it’s a good idea. Quite the contrary.
There are four general categories to which most objections belong. Let’s look at the them:
Political: Not much to say here, because this is a sphere in which nothing is ever resolved. The political fortresses from which accusations have been hurled like stone cannonballs are very well defined: right, left, extreme right, extreme left, and a mass of foot soldiers in the middle with all sorts of commingled ideas. But if you don’t belong to some group, nobody will ever listen to you (not that they listen so much anyway). Only thing is, each group has an agenda which includes lots of other issues as well, so if you join one to reject the MOSE project, you could find yourself on mailing lists as being against a batch of other undertakings as well. Maybe you’re not against those, maybe you don’t even care.
The lagoon has no idea there is a famous city sitting out there somewhere.
Others point out that the Special Law for Venice, by which federal funds are earmarked for the city, specifically authorized interventions to stop pollution and re-establish the morphologic equilibrium of the lagoon. It doesn’t appear that MOSE will satisfy either of those requirements. Au contraire.
Even more important, each side considers it a good day’s work if it has managed to frustrate or thwart the other. No other result is really necessary. This reality is the cholesterol in the political metabolism, hardening and constricting the arteries through which ideas and energy and good will might otherwise have flowed to produce something beneficial to the organism (the city and the lagoon) as a whole.
Economic: Every enormous public work since the Great Pyramid of Cholula (and perhaps even that one) has exceeded its projected cost. The original date of completion was given as 2010. This has now moved to 2014. Hence the costs have also changed. MOSE was budgeted at $4.5 billion, more or less, depending on whose estimates you follow, a number which it has now overtaken without even slowing down to wave. In 2008, the cost had risen to $7 billion.
There is also the cost/benefit aspect to consider. I think it’s fair to say that anyone who is not personally involved would concede that the costs and the benefits of this colossal undertaking do not come anywhere near matching up.
One foreign newspaper reported that $30 million a year is lost in business each time the Piazza San Marco floods (meaning that these 40-some shops can make $30 million in six hours, when the tide is in? Wow…. ). But let’s say acqua alta does cost $30 million, even if that number is cited only by the people who would benefit from the effects of such a prediction.
MOSE, as already mentioned, not only has cost $7 billion by now with 35 percent and two more years to go. Few if any mention is made of the estimated cost of annual maintenance of this behemoth: a mere $11.5 million. Of course, this will be eternal income to the interested parties. The project will be finished, but maintenance is forever.
Plenty of people would like to keep living here, if they could. But to the locals, it can seem like it's one of the great forgotten cities of the world.
But that isn’t the crux of the objections to its price tag. Simply put, it’s that money dedicated to MOSE is lost to anything else.
Stories which focus on the cost/disturbances inflicted by a few hours of water on the ground don’t tend to refer to the financial scorched earth the MOSE project has made of the quality of daily life for everybody everywhere in Venice, not just the shopkeepers around San Marco. Paying for this project, which might bring a temporary benefit to the city a couple of times a year, has deprived the city of the money required for numerous, more humble needs (schools, ambulances, restoration of monuments and private buildings, etc.).
Just about every facility or service which is important to city life, more important than the occasional need to put on the Wellies, has been cut in some way. The administrations’s constant cry “We have no money” tends not to explain why.
Environmental: When UNESCO designated Venice as a World Heritage Site in 1987, it specifically included the entire Venetian lagoon. It is the second-largest wetland in Europe (Europe has lost 2/3 of its wetlands in the last 100 years). It is vital area for plants, fish, and birds, some of which are already endangered. Every year some 200,000 birds winter, nest, or pause here in their twice-yearly migrations. One could make a reasonable case that the lagoon has a value which rivals that of Venice.
Local, national and international environmental groups have raised countless alarms about the effect of this project on the lagoon environment. Prominent among these are the World Wildlife Fund, LIPU (the bird people), RAMSAR (international wetland protection), Italia Nostra, and more, down to a local citizens’ group called simply “NoMose.”
In one of many reports, Italia Nostra summarized its concerns: “The dams will render permanent the Lagoon’s environmental imbalance: The deep channels dredged in the last century through its outlets will become concrete. The erosion that is now eating away the Lagoon’s precious wetlands would become permanent, and this rich coastal lagoon, protected by European law, would be transformed into an area of open sea.”
What is so elegantly called a cavaliere d'Italia (knight of Italy), in English is merely the black-winged stilt. Still beautiful, though.
The deepening of the channels to accommodate the cement frame for the caissons has already intensified the tidal flow — I can see and feel it every day. Faster and stronger tides mean many things: More erosion of the bottom sediments (one of the defining characteristics of a lagoon environment), consequent damage to the eelgrass which serves to anchor the sediment and which provide a habitat for many small marine species, and so on up the chain.
My favorite of many favorite ducks is a wintering species called a "tuffetto" (little diver). Their arrival and departure are parentheses around the winter.
There is also great concern about the physical impact of the materials used, specifically the caissons’ zinc plates (zinc is forbidden by European law) as well as the anti-fouling paint, which contains many toxic chemicals such as TBT compounds, assorted heavy metals, and solvents. Coats of anti-fouling paint have to be periodically renewed, so that will contribute another dose of this stuff to the environment. Damage to the lagoon and the Adriatic is seen as virtually inevitable. I must mention that the builders deny this.
Data and forecasts which justify the project have been questioned by many different sources. Some of the data does not appear anywhere but in the builders’ documents.
Engineering: Plenty of engineers from assorted countries, those who are not directly involved in the project, have always voiced doubts about whether it’s likely to work the way it’s supposed to.
Another perspective on the system, which clearly shows the the caissons fitting snugly together, forming a perfectly even wall. It will be great if nothing shifts or leaks.
Some of their concerns are:
It has never been completely tested.
The only positive assessment rendered by an independent panel of engineers was restricted to saying whether the design could function as intended — that is, whether it would work as designed. Virtually all other independent evaluations have been extremely cautious, if not negative. No engineers except the builders, to my knowledge, have risked saying whether it should be built. Maybe that’s not what engineers are supposed to do. UNESCO wrote an analysis in 2003 which concisely evaluated the project’s drawbacks, including the meteorological predictions on which it is based.
There are discernible aspects of the design which must ALWAYS function PERFECTLY (difficult in a salt-water environment),or they won’t perform the way they’re supposed to. For one thing, there is a high risk of the seal between the caissons not being watertight. If water begins to pass between the caissons, the wall they form could be dangerously compromised (fancy word for “weakened”). If the caissons for any reason do not align perfectly, ditto.
If for some reason encrustation of any sort remains on the caissons and/or their anchoring hinges (salt-water is great for fostering encrustations of minerals and critters), the barrier may not rise in the manner or at the rate necessary.
If sea-level increases fulfill the darker prophecies, not only will the caissons have to be used more often and kept in place for longer periods of time than predicted (undergoing stresses for which they were not designed), but eventually their maximum height may not be enough.
After decades of legal battles, the design was already obsolete before construction even began. Thirty years is an eternity in engineering terms. (Imagine buying a car designed 30 years ago.) Whatever its flaws, it should have been modified or updated in some way by now. But no.
Perhaps most important, critics point out that this titanic construction flouts several principles sacred not only to the hydraulic engineers of the Venetian Republic (not exactly amateurs) but also to commonly-accepted principles of environmental and engineering prudence. Those principles are:
The project should be gradual, to permit evaluation of the results obtained at each stage and, if necessary, permit changes to the original plan. This obviously isn’t the case here.
The project should be reversible. MOSE obviously isn’t.
The project should be experimental. By “experimental” the Special Law clearly intends that a project should be tested experimentally before it is definitely approved and funded and built. That never happened.
How did this project ever get approved?
I can’t swear that I know. Here is what I do know: That the project was assigned to the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, a consortium which the city has exclusively authorized (some have used the word “monopoly”) to intervene in the lagoon. This consortium is made up of more than 20 Italian engineering and construction companies — in a word, businessmen. Scientists who promote or defend the project are often consultants for the consortium.
So here we are. It’s too late to be any use, but I’d like to recall a comment by Wendell Berry, the farmer/writer/environmental critic.
“A good solution to a problem,” he said, “is one which does not create new problems.”
