MOSE, Problems

Same old same old

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I don’t know why they call it news — here, at least, certain things happen over and over to the point where they ought to be called olds.

Some random examples of olds would be the periodic blitz of the Guardia di Finanza against the illegal clam fishermen; the periodic blitz of the Carabinieri (or vigili, or Guardia di Finanza) against the illegal handbag sellers, with concomitant confiscation of their unfathomable supply of counterfeit goods; the periodic blitz (hm, we haven’t had one of those for a while) of the aforementioned forces of public order against the perpetrators of motondoso; and the ceaseless moaning of the city, like a raccoon caught in a foothold trap, that “no ghe xe schei,”

Two headlines this week are worth reporting, if only because we haven’t seen them for a while — though that does not mitigate the “here we go again” factor.

Note that the gates are not going to be in the Bacino of San Marco. But it’s a cheerful little vision of how beautifully the system is supposed to work.

“Opere infinite Il Mose slitta di due anni” (Infinite works MOSE slips by two years).

MOSE:  Sometimes friends and/or visitors inquire as to the progress of the floodgate project which is going to save Venice from acqua alta, so the builders claim.  Despite incessant statements by interested parties giving the impression that high water is virtually a daily scourge, I should mention that I didn’t put on my boots even once last season (by which I mean acqua-alta-season, running from September to April).  Not once. Yes, there was some water in the Piazza San Marco a few times.  As usual, it went away after a few hours.

This headline carries no surprises but only some new information. First of all,  construction projects everywhere are born behind schedule. So we are not amazed to read that the project isn’t going to be finished in 2014, as claimed a few years ago when 2014 was also a shifted-forward date.  They say it’s going to be finished on December 31, 2016.

Bear in mind that the construction of the Calatrava Bridge took six years to complete (original projection: one and a half years), and it’s a simple span a mere 80 meters (262 feet) long.  So looking at MOSE, if the term “Great Pyramid of Khufu” comes to mind, it’s understandable. (For the record, the pyramid was built in 20 years.  MOSE was begun in 2003, but considering how far construction projects tend to expand into the future and into the budget, we may be seeing a rival for the record in the making.)

The basic reason for the change in date is that the money is running out.  You may have noticed that money is not as plentiful as it once was — say, back in 2003, or even in 2006, when the government, under Prime Minister Romano Prodi, voted colossal quantities of cash for this undertaking.  In my view, this was an investment, not in the future of Venice, but in the future of the investors themselves, seeing that it will require spending money for maintenance for the rest of eternity.

It’s the first time I’ve noticed the geometrical similarity between the two mega-projects, though I suppose engineering feats involving 45-degree angles aren’t all that rare. I wonder if anyone will be around in 4,500 years to notice if the floodgates have lasted as long as the pyramid. Or if anybody will care.

The Berlusconi government was less enthusiastic, but the funding continued.  But now it’s different. The current government, headed by economist Mario Monti, is attempting to keep the entire country from going to the bottom with all hands aboard, so you can understand why paying for MOSE might not be seen as an urgent national priority. Especially since the current estimate on how much it will cost to finish this little adventure is 1,200 million euros ($1,451,890,000). There might be other things that cost more, but those other things might be more important to more people. Anyway, this number will also change.

Vu’ cumpra’ in fuga dai vigili travolgono due turiste (“Illegal handbag-sellers fleeing the police knock over two women tourists,” reported Monday, July 23);  Blitz antiabusivi, agente travolto (“Blitz against the illegal handbag sellers, an agent knocked down,” reported Tuesday, July 24).  

Nothing new here except the quantity of victims.

Translation: “”Vu’ cumpra'” is the African-accent rendition of “Vuoi comprare?” or “Do you want to buy?” It has become the generic nickname for the entire category. “Abusivi” is a general term which could be applied to anyone doing something without a license which requires a license.  (Hence drug dealers or prostitutes, for example, wouldn’t be called “abusivi.”)

In Venetian terms, an abusivo could be a clam fishermen who digs mollusks out of season, in forbidden areas, in excessive quantities.  It can also describe the new self-appointed porters, mostly Eastern European men, who semi-threaten tourists in order to carry their luggage over the Calatrava Bridge for money.

But it most often is used to describe the street-sellers of counterfeit handbags and other objects such as sunglasses and tiny camera tripods.  There are so many of them in critical tourist areas (Riva degli Schiavoni, Calle Larga XX Marzo, Strada Nuova) that the undermanned police forces make only sporadic efforts to punish them.  They arrest whomever they can catch, they take their goods, they might even take them to court, briefly. Next day — sorry, next hour — everything has returned to exactly the way it was.

A typical scene. I would have taken some pictures myself, but I’m afraid of them too. (Published on ilbrigante.it, perhaps taken by the author, Giovanna D’Arbitrio.)

The only reason the abusivi might deserve a place in the Gazzettino would be either the assault by the police, or an unusually large amount of merchandise taken away, or physical harm to whatever unfortunate human was in their way as they were fleeing at top speed down narrow streets and around corners. In this case, two of the above.

Running into people, I note, is a good thing for the fleeing abusivi because it means that at least some of the pursuing officers have to stop to look after the injured person.

On Monday, July 23, a surprise “attack” on the sellers in the Calle Larga XX Marzo was made around 7:00 PM, when the shops begin to close and the street begins to be lined with bag-sellers.  This action was a result of a petition signed by the merchants who say that potential customers are afraid to pass the vu’ cumpra’ to enter their stores.  These petitions are also perennial.

The agents blocked all the exits, so to speak, and swooped down.  They carried away some 400 items, mostly bags, a trifling amount, as well as 15 sellers, half of whom were clandestine (i.e., here without permission) and some of whom already had long, dense rap sheets on file.  But some of the sellers fought back, particularly the one who violently pushed one agent who fell to the pavement.

Around 11:00 PM last Saturday night, on the bridge by the Danieli Hotel, a similar scene involved a woman bowled over by a man running away loaded with his bulky bag of stuff. No major harm done to her; it appears that the man got away.

Sunday afternoon around 3:00 PM in Campo San Zulian, the same scenario: Running man ricochets off woman.  No major harm here either, but it’s not much more attractive to watch than it is to experience.

You may ask why this situation persists.  Everyone wants to know the answer to this question.  If I ever find out, I will immediately let you know. The answer might even be published in the oldspaper.

 

 

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Motondoso, Water

The latest big fat idea for the big fat ships

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So the Costa Concordia ran aground (January 13) and the administration here instantly went into several varieties of fits to show how eager it was to ensure that no such catastrophe could ever be inflicted on the most-beautiful-city-in-the-world by one of these leviathans, whose number is increasing at a Biblical rate.

Passengers see a ship. The anti-ship cadre sees a potential disaster. The city government sees a floating Brink's truck loaded with money, without which Venice can no longer survive. You decide.

Mission: Banish the Big Ships from the Bacino of San Marco where they might well run into a section of historic and irreplaceable real estate. I haven’t seen any calculations on the odds of this risk, but they may be similar to the odds of winning the lottery.

Lots of people who buy a lottery ticket think/hope that the probability of winning could be pretty good.  In the same way, lots of people who see the big ships passing think/fear that the probability of a huge catastrophe could be pretty good.  The distance between “could” and “might” is hard to measure when emotions run high.

The mayor, of course, promised rapid solutions, to be followed, naturally, by immediate results (hence the use of the word “solution”).  As expected, “rapid” is morphing into “eventual” on its way to “maybe” and then — who knows? — “never.”

The Petroleum Canal, which has already done so much damage, is the right angle on the left of the frame. The proposed new extension to the cruise port is the slightly sagging line connecting it to Venice. The idea would be to assign either the arrival or departure of a big ship via this route,thereby halving the number of transits of the bacino of San Marco.

The first proposal launched — and so quickly as to have barely resulted from first thoughts, much less second thoughts — was to dig a new canal. The environmental damage this would cause is so vast and so obvious that it’s hard to believe it was even discussed.  A large amount of information demonstrating what a terrible idea it is was instantly thrown in front of this notion to prevent its going any further (latest detail: deepening the Canale di Sant’ Angelo would mean having to tear out and reposition somewhere else a certain quantity of important cables buried there, not to mention the high-tension-wire pylons flanking it).  Even the cost of this undertaking hasn’t caused this notion to be officially abandoned, but its momentum seems to have slowed.

But if a new canal makes no sense, the proposal made a few days ago obliterates the line between creative and cuckoo. I wouldn’t even have mentioned it, but I wanted to show how really hard it is to come up with an alternative to the present system.

Ferruccio Falconi, a retired port pilot (who you might think would be more familiar with the lagoon and its behavior than most), has pulled the pin on the following idea and tossed it at the groin of common sense.

He proposes gouging out the mudbanks between the island of Sant’ Erasmo and the inlet at San Nicolo’, an area known as bacan’ (bah-KAHN).  On the map, it looks like useless empty space longing for a purpose in life.  But it already has a purpose — two of them.

This view shows the lagoon inlet at San Nicolo' on the left; in the middle is the island created for the MOSE project, which has already affected tidal behavior. "Bacan'" is the beige area in the big channel to the right, a swath of mudbanks with a temporarily exposed islet fronting the lower edge of the island of Sant' Erasmo. (Photo: Chris 73, Wikimedia Commons).

Its first purpose is the same as that of similar areas which compose the bloody-but-unbowed natural lagoon ecosystem. Mudbanks and barene, the remnants of marshy wetlands scattered around, are an essential component of the lagoon environment.  You may not care about clams and herons and glasswort, but these formations also slow the speed of the tide, something that ought to interest people ashore in the most-beautiful-city at least as much as the vision of a ship heading toward the fondamenta.

Its second purpose is as one of the all-time favorite places for thousands of pleasure-boaters to spend long summer days swimming and clamming and picnicking.

Doesn't this look neat and tidy? Eight ships all snugged up together. While constant dredging would undoubtedly be required to keep the area from refilling with sand and mud, that effort would be helped by the vortexes created by cruise-ship propellers. (Photo: Il Gazzettino)

But according to Falconi, the creation of a basin where nature never put, or wanted, or intends to keep one, would be the perfect place to park the cruise ships. Ergo, there would also have to be the construction of a huge jetty.

As simple geometry, it looks okay, though I failed geometry. But apart from the problems the size, weight, and propeller-power those eight little rectangles represent, there is also the inconvenient fact that Sant’ Erasmo is an island, raising the issue of by what means the floating Alps of the sea would be provisioned, and how the passengers would arrive and depart.

Simple: By boat. Thereby increasing by several powers of ten the amount of waves (motondoso) caused by the multiplied number of motorized craft running around the area (barges, taxis, launches, and scows carrying trucks). Motondoso has already damaged a lot of the lagoon, so this new activity would eradicate a new chunk of what’s left. The summer motorboats are already sufficiently destructive — why would even more be seen as a good thing?

This idea is yet another example of the point where Feasibility and Desirability break up, despite the best efforts of people with assorted motives to make them get married and have children.

The "Ruby Princess" backing out of its berth at Tronchetto, like its companions, scours up a lot of sediment, not all of which settles back where it came from.

The following letter to the Gazzettino (March 29, 2012) gives an excellent analysis of this suggestion (translated by me):

LAGUNA CROCIERE E GRANDI NAVI  (Lagoon, cruises, and big ships)

I read in the Gazzettino of the new proposal to “save” the cruises.

One appreciates the fantasy that unfortunately is right in step with the temerity of certain choices which we see at all institutional levels in the management of this problem.

To excavate bacan’ at Sant’ Erasmo to make it feasible for the big ships to maneuver and moor, ships which are tending to get bigger, would signify changing the hydrodynamics of the North Lagoon.

The creation of the new island in front of the inlet (at San Nicolo’) has already caused an increase in the velocity of the incoming tide, creating hydrodynamic imbalances with important consequent damage to the city.

To create a basin of 12 meters (40 feet) deep, at the least, to move and accommodate ships would make even that piece of lagoon into a piece of the sea.

Perhaps the fanciful pilot who has come up with this “loveliness” has forgotten about the abyss in front of San Nicolo’ with the resulting collapse of the bastions of the Fort of Sant’ Andrea a few years ago.

One understands that unfortunately the mentality still hasn’t changed: One tries to resolve a problem creating others. Or to put it this way: the application of the theory that has created MOSE: one creates a “solution” which, to talk about it, resolves the effects but not the cause.

The question arises spontaneously: Is the port worth the city?

(signed) Manuel Vecchina, Venezia

Excellent question, but don’t put it to Falconi.  He’s already got the answer.

Here's a view of the area where the eight ships would park, with Sant' Erasmo in the background. Low tide reveals how much mud and sand there is, and how far below the surface it is. Guess Vittorio Orio will have to find another place to work on his mascareta, to make room for the Queen Victoria, the Norwegian Gem, and so on.
A winter view of the same area, seen from the shore of Sant' Erasmo. It may look empty, but you should just see how much life there is bustling around in there.
And here's a glimpse of how much life is bustling around the surface on a typical summer day here. Actually, this is nothing -- there are boats anchored all over bacan'.
Egrets like to eat too, but if the big ships move in, all this will wash out to sea and the birds will have to bring their lunch with them.
By "big ships" I mean something like this.

The Venetian lagoon is one of the most important coastal ecosystems in the entire Mediterranean.  A century ago there were 35 square miles of salt-marsh wetlands in the lagoon; due to erosion by motondoso and the tidal force increased by the Petroleum Canal, by 1990 there were only 18 square miles left. Now we have MOSE, the floodgates whose installation required extreme deepening of the inlets, creating even stronger tidal flows.

In little more than 30 years, some 25,000,000 cubic meters of sediment have been flushed out to sea.  At the current rate of erosion, the World Wildlife Fund has estimated that by 2050 there will be no wetlands left. So Venice is spending masses of money to rebuild a batch of them where they’ve been eroded away. Where they will be eroded away again. Now we want a fantasy port to speed up the process which is turning the lagoon into a bay of the sea?

I sometimes think that if these people want to change the lagoon so much, why don’t they just drop a bomb on it, and get it over with?

The fort of Sant' Andrea was built in the mid-1500's to defend the approach to Venice from enemies entering at San Nicolo'. The cannon were placed at the waterline in order to blast out the hulls of any approaching enemy ships. At low tide the cement apron is easy to see.

The reference to the Fort of Sant’ Andrea in Vecchini’s letter recalls the fact that some years ago (even before MOSE) the force of the tide was eroding the island beneath this historic structure, and the walls of the entrance were beginning to sag and open up. Solution: Throw masses of cement on the shallow lagoon bottom in front of it to stop the slow-motion collapse.  When we row past there, we have to avoid what is essentially a broad cement shelf reaching outward from the fort.  Of course I’m glad it’s there.  I’m just saying.

Venice wanted the ships, but playing with them and their effects is beginning to look a lot like getting into a game of strip poker with no cards at all.

And no clothes, either.

 

 

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Nature, Problems, Water

Acqua alta update

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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.
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.
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.

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History, Nature, Problems, Tourism, Water

MOSE : no happily ever after

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It’s probably way past everybody’s bedtime, so I’ll  wrap up this little philippic.

Imagining momentarily that a satisfactory conclusion could ever be reached in the Gordian convolutions of the “floodgate” project,  permit me to make a few very brief observations.

First, let us make a concerted effort to ban all those irresistible  emotional words that acqua alta seems to force from journalists’ subconscious.   “Venice under siege,” is a common one.   CNN said that the high water of December, 2008 had been caused by the Adriatic “bursting its banks.”   (Banks?   Bursting?   Are we in Holland?).   The Discovery Channel stated that the high water was “cannibalizing” the city’s buildings (OMG).   And on and on.   One could smile if this kind of reporting wasn’t cannibalizing common sense.

If the city can't manage to find some money for people, even when we've got MOSE we may no longer have any people. I'm sorry moments like this will become so rare.
If the city can't manage to find some money for people, even when we've got MOSE we may no longer have any people. Good thing we have pictures.

When I think about it really calmly, it appears to me that it’s actually impossible for the planners and builders of MOSE to be able to make any promise (guarantee, statement, claim,  whatever you like) about their creation that they can prove is accurate.

There are simply too many unknowns in the many different scenarios devoted to its use: How well it will function — that’s the big one —   how much its maintenance (routine or extra)  will cost, where the money for feeding and caring for it will come from, etc.  

Every claim from its proponents is supported so far only by data assembled  by them.

Probably the two major areas of  concern for its  success are:

First: How  high the highest tides are likely to become.   Some  estimates only give MOSE 100 years of usefulness, after which the highest tides will spill over its maximum height.   The frequency and duration of these exceptional high tides are also subject to interminable debate.   But nobody knows.

I wonder who will put up the laundry everybody (including me) loves to photograph. Maybe they'll hire somebody.
I wonder who will hang out the laundry everybody (including me) loves to photograph. Maybe they'll hire somebody.

Second: How well the individual caissons will remain aligned.    As I mentioned in my last post, if they begin to lose their perfect uniform surface (even if only one of them doesn’t rise as high as its neighbor, or the seal begins to leak), the strength of the entire “wall” of caissons will be compromised.  

I have rowed against the incoming tide at the inlet at San Nicolo, in normal weather with no hint of wind or surge, and it is nowhere near being a joke.   If the barrier isn’t perfect, the tide will come in whether MOSE is ready or not.

But let us not be downhearted.   Let’s say that the machinery functions perfectly, precisely as planned.   Let’s say that exceptional high water occurs ever more frequently. as expected.   Let’s say that every prediction is fulfilled, even though there is no way to assume they will be.

Here is the real question:   Has Venice been saved from anything except some water in the street    for a few hours?

The true inundation, the most implacable and destructive, is the endless tide of tourists.   The number increases 3 per cent every year; in 2009 it reached 21 million in an area of about three square miles.

No need to waste any time worrying about the old folks, they'll be gone anyway.
No need to waste any time worrying about the old folks, they'll be gone anyway.

Whether this  fact   inspires emotion or not, it is more measurable, and predictable, than the inexact, politically driven “science” that has given birth to MOSE.

So let’s say that while assorted interested parties continue  to water and fertilize  the popular  obsession which the press has with acqua alta,  some very real  problems continue to be  neglected.

Young families will continue to move away because they can’t afford Venice (housing, primarily, though lack of jobs is a close second), the older generations eventually die off, and before MOSE has become obsolete the city will be devoid of residents.   In their place will be the tsunami of tourists — tended to by merchants who mostly live on the mainland — which will  finally render the city completely unliveable.

So even if MOSE performs perfectly, the Venice that has been “saved” will amount to nothing more than a collection of really old buildings, beautiful or not, according to your taste.

If no comparable effort is made to revive and protect the life of Venice, then even if MOSE turns out to be an engineering marvel to rival the invention of the arch, the once-thriving city will be as devoid of life as Machu Picchu.

When that happens, there’s won’t be much point in vilifying MOSE, or bewailing the triumph of politics and fear over basic municipal common sense.  

But unfortunately, and perhaps even unwillingly, even the not-so-old will be gone too.
But unfortunately, and perhaps even unwillingly, even the not-so-old will be gone too.

But it seems clear, even now, before the first button is pushed,  that if the time, energy, and billions of dollars that will have been spent to hold back the tide had been dedicated to resolving the chronic, debilitating problems that Venice experiences every day,  in 50 years there would still be a living city worth saving.

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