Veritas | Venice: I am not making this up

Drink up: The aqueduct today

June 23, 2018 No Comments

You can thank thousands of people for this, starting with the victims of cholera whose fate made it clear that it was time for Venice to get a real water supply.

To pick up the story more or less where we left off, Venice continued to hydrate itself with water ferried across the lagoon in boats — plus the occasional well — until 1884, when the aqueduct was finally constructed that is bringing you water even as you read this.

I’m not a connoisseur of aqueducts, though I grasp the most basic outlines of the enterprise. But when I went to the Museum of the Aqueduct (not made up) near Piazzale Roma I was amazed, impressed, and totally gobsmacked by the amount of freaking knowledge one has to have in order to construct a public water supply, knowledge that’s expressed in formulas that look like angry porcupines with square roots instead of quills.

That little doorway in the corner next to the church of Sant’ Andrea de la Zirada is the entrance to the water-supply complex. No photos allowed in the grounds, which is too bad because they have two charming fountains I’d love to have shown you.

The entrance to the complex — the museum is in a building inside the walls. “Sportelli” are the desks where staff help you resolve your problems with bills, service, or anything in between. Only open in the morning from Monday to Friday, 8:30 – 12:30. No charge for the museum. However, everything is written in Italian. Though you do get to hear the soothing hum of the pumps at work.

Here is the network of pipes in Venice today (I regret the uneven background color; the lighting in the museum was just that way):

The system now serves the historic center, Giudecca, Murano, Lido, Pellestrina, Vignole, Sant’ Erasmo and the “minor islands” of the lagoon. The Veritas laboratory conducts 800 analyses per day on 17,000 samples.

In case you think you’ve never seen the aqueduct, water pipes are easy to detect on a summer morning.

Also to be detected under bridges, because that’s how the pipes get across the canals.

And the opposite is dependably visible in the winter.

This rendering shows the position of the pipe along the original Ponte degli Scalzi (1854).

According to VERITAS (Venezia Energia Risorse Idriche Territorio Ambiente Servizi), the latest edition of the water-and-trash-collection entity, the water system of the 44-town province of Venice is respectably vast. Let me say that statistics quoted by Veritas tend to vary according to assorted parameters, so I’ve taken the more modest numbers available in an effort to keep as close to the facts for the historic center as I can.

The distribution network of the aqueduct is more than 1,150 km (714 miles), 300 km (186 miles) of which are in the historic center. These pipes provide the Comune of Venice (261,321 inhabitants, including Mestre) with more than 45 million cubic meters of water a year, or 11,887,742,356.116679 gallons. Eighty-six per cent of this ocean of H2O is groundwater drawn from 49 wells (another source says 60 wells) between Venice, Padua and Treviso, and a small part from the Sile river which is made potable at Ca’ Solaro (Favaro). But it was a long, arduous, and costly path that brought us to this shining moment.

At the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, the population was about 150,000; the following two decades saw an intense depopulation at an average rate of 21 per cent per year. By 1820 there were only 100,000 people in Venice; after the cholera epidemic of 1838 only 93,500 inhabitants. Then began a gradual recovery and by 1857 the population was 120,414.

It was long since obvious that the hygienic/sanitary situation of the city had become extremely precarious. Water was still being brought from the mainland, but it wasn’t sufficient, and the once-glorious wells had been left to die. Veritas explains this by saying that the wells were at risk of infiltration of salt water via acqua alta and the necessary maintenance was difficult and expensive. I take that to mean “Nobody wanted to bother,” because the Venetian Republic didn’t seem to have any trouble maintaining them.

In any case, the situation was becoming dire. A survey commissioned by the city government in 1873 revealed that of a total of 4,329 wells, 2,620 were “mediocre,” 340 “muddy,” and 461 were “fetid.” And lack of any sewage treatment system only made everything worse.

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL INTERLUDE #1

To appreciate the importance — even urgency — of building an aqueduct for Venice, some context is necessary. In the 19th century, Venice (and most cities in Italy) (and Europe) was a hotbed of infectious diseases. Sorry to ruin your images of glamour, but parts of Venice more closely resembled Dickensian London than the refulgent Serenissima.

Cholera, unknown in Europe before the 1800’s, began to work its way across the continent. Major epidemics struck Venice in 1835-36, 1848-49, 1855, 1873, interspersed with smallpox, measles, and typhoid, terrifying diseases that flourished in poverty-stricken, cramped, feculent cities and which were vaguely battled by bewildered doctors and exploitative folk healers. Descriptions of the streets and smells in the most degraded neighborhoods will not be transcribed here — you’re welcome — but a city having more than 100,000 inhabitants with a lugubrious water supply and no sewage disposal other than the nearest canal basically describes itself. Venice wasn’t alone; in most Italian cities of the 19th century, sufficient potable water and adequate sewers simply did not exist. “Deadly pathogens,” as one writer put it, “led a very public existence here.”

The cholera epidemic of 1836 killed 2,066 persons in Venice; in 1849 cholera carried away 3,839 victims. Unable to keep up with burials, the city simply stacked the cadavers in the stifling August heat in the area in front of the church of San Pietro in Castello.

The campo in front of the church of San Pietro in Castello is much happier during the annual festa in late June.

Naturally the desperate quarantines and fruitless cordons sanitaires that were imposed across Italy meant that commerce was strangled, and when the cholera relented, Venice was on its knees economically as well. After the epidemic of 1854-55, the price of every type of food in the city had doubled. The Swiss had collection boxes marked For the cholera victims among Venice’s poor installed in hotels in Ticino (a region in Switzerland neighboring Italy), a well-meaning gesture that infuriated the Italians.

These calamities led to predictable battles among the city’s politicians, while the distraught common people, having noticed the similarities between this new disease and poisoning, began to spread panicky rumors that the State was deliberately trying to kill them. In Calabria, according to a government minister writing later, “widespread rioting had broken out after the vast majority of cholera cases had occurred among the poor,
who … accused the rich of being directly responsible for the cholera outbreak. The government, it was believed, had dispersed poisoned powder in an attempt to kill off a sizeable portion of the region’s poor … Cholera riots were as widely feared as they were common.”

By the time cholera struck again in 1873, “build an aqueduct” was at the top of the municipal must-do list.

End of interlude.

In July, 1874, at the conclusion of the latest cholera epidemic, the city administrators put out a call for bids on an aqueduct. Six projects were submitted; the winning bid was from L.A. Ritterbandt and D. Croll Dalgairns of London. The plan was this: The water would come from the Brenta canal between Stra and Dolo (this sounds familiar); at Moranzani there would be filters, tanks and pumps (ditto); and a duct beneath the lagoon would ultimately reach Venice at the Maritime Station (Sant’ Andrea) where the water would fill a huge cistern. Here steam-powered pumps would send the water to private users, 111 public wells, and to boats assigned to supply the islands. The contract was signed on June 26, 1876 (two years after the call for bids…) but something must have gone askew because three years later there was still no sign of an aqueduct; a French company acquired the concession and the right to build it.

On March 15, 1880 the Minister of Public Works stipulated that the Veneta Society for Ventures and Public Construction (sub-contractor for the French company) must complete the work within three years. Cost: 1,100,000 gold French francs ($14,300,000 at current value) and 2,506,100 Italian lire (current value not found).

More pipe had to be laid in 1913-1915, according to the date on this photograph. But the scene couldn’t have changed much from the original aqueduct. Sections of pipes brought on wagons drawn by horses, loaded onto boats called peatas (here in the Canal Salso between the lagoon and Mestre), and then rowed to the work site.

1882: Laying Duct 800 across the lagoon. First, they had to build walls and pump out the lagoon water, then dig the trench — men with shovels — and so on from there. Thirty per cent of the original iron pipes are still in use.

I’d never reflected on the amount of lumber required for building an aqueduct.

This structure, called a cassera, is essentially horizontal scaffolding whose primary duty is to brace the walls against the pressure of the surrounding lagoon. It’s also very useful for walking from here to there.

And, as you see, the work proceeded to a happy conclusion.

On June 23, 1884, let there be water! Ten years after the big decision was made, a jet of water from a magnificent temporary fountain in the Piazza San Marco leapt skyward to mark the inauguration of the new public water supply. Abundant! Clean! Glittering! Expensive! Before long, they had to adjust the ratio between number of users and number of coins per cubic meter because people weren’t signing up as predicted.

That taken care of, before long yet more water was needed, so some springs on the mainland at Sant’ Ambrogio (near Trebaseleghe) were tapped and more kilometers of pipe were laid.

On March 7, 1898 the network reached Murano, where the first spurt was celebrated with lights, stands (food, undoubtedly), a charity raffle, and a regata.

On October 1, 1900 the network reached the Giudecca.

On August 5 1901 the network reached the Lido. This must have been more than welcome, considering that the first sea-bathing establishments had begun to appear in 1857. The luxurious Grand Hotel des Bains had opened in 1900; I have no idea how their guests had been supplied with water. Maybe they bathed in prosecco.

July 18 1911: The aqueduct suffered a rupture which left the city, the islands and the estuary without water for eight days (in summer, of course). The investigation concluded that a boat probably ran over it. To avoid future inconvenience, the city approved construction of two additional ducts from the mainland to Sant’ Andrea.

May, 1911: Cholera strikes again. As it happened, German author Thomas Mann was visiting Venice during this period, so cholera became a major element of “Death in Venice,” published in 1912. I’ve never thought about how a tourist board might judge the relative value of a novel featuring a particularly repellent local epidemic if written by a Nobel laureate. Must have been awkward.

It’s interesting to note that, among some other factors I’ll write about elsewhere, these epidemics contributed to the 19th-century Romantic vision of Venice as sad, melancholic, somber, doleful. I’ve always wondered where that idea came from — you can’t blame everything on the fog — but it stands to reason that the general atmosphere (I don’t mean the olfactory) in 19th-century Venice often was not the most jovial.

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL INTERLUDE #2

So, I hear you ask — fancy new aqueduct and there’s still cholera? Certainly; not everybody was immediately hooked up to the system. You not only had to pay for the water, but for the connection and the meter. Lots of families couldn’t afford it.

Second, running water from the faucets did not automatically mean plumbing and flush toilets. Yes, drinking and washing with clean water is a huge step forward in public health, but most families continued with chamber pots or the occasional bucket and the nearest canal for quite a while. Naming no names, but someone I know extremely well reports that his family continued till at least the Fifties to use the chute in the kitchen (yes, in the kitchen) which went down into the canal. The opening was covered by a heavy stone which had a handle on it, which was convenient and mostly blocked out the odor.

I have now finally understood the deeper meaning of a common phrase everybody uses when they want to cut short a disagreement: “Metemo na piera sora.” “Let’s just put a stone on it.” I’d been imagining a tombstone, which connotes finality as well as anything else I can think of. But now the image of covering the toilet seems ever so much more powerful.

End of interlude. Also, end of story. I used to be fascinated by the lagoon, and still am, but I have to say that water pouring out of any faucet here has come to fill me with admiration and awe.

A very eccentric and overstuffed shop in Cannaregio has antique appurtenances of various types, including old faucets. Think of the pleasure each one of these brought, back then when people hadn’t quite begun to take running water for granted.

You can design faucets with every material and in every way your brain can contrive, but somehow now they don’t impress me anywhere as much as the fact that water comes out of them.

Uncategorized, Water

Drink up: Artesian wells and fountains

March 10, 2018 2 Comments

Let’s return to the subject of the public water supply. Even with thousands of rain-collecting wells in the city, Venice needed more water. (Bear in mind that in the 1600’s Venice had some 200,000 inhabitants). And they were thirsty, needed to wash their clothes, needed to dye their wool and silk, and so on.

I do not know how many artesian wells have ever been drilled here, so please do not ask me. But they were precious, obviously, especially when there was a drought. Or when bombs began to fall in the 20th century, threatening the aqueduct.

This trusty artesian well is in the Campo dei Ognissanti in Dorsoduro. Like many fountains here it lacks any sort of basin, no matter how small, for animals to drink from. I do not understand this.

A restoration a few years ago added the official inscription…

“Prof.ta M 209.75 ” means “Profondita’ (profundity, depth) 209.75 meters,” or 688.15 feet.

This artesian well in Campo San Basso, otherwise known as the Piazzetta dei Leoncini, has been bubbling up for centuries. It is said to be the deepest in the city. I know no more, but if it’s deeper than the one at Ognissanti it deserves more respect than it ever gets.

There are always pigeons splashing around here, it must be something like a spa for them.

The upwelling water is easy to discern here. Curiously, while this pool must be a godsend to the pigeons and passing dogs, there is absolutely no provision here for supplying water to parched passersby. It’s the opposite of the fountain at the Ognissanti (and elsewhere). What is so hard about the notion of supplying water to everybody/thing?

Do you see a well in Campazzo San Sebastiano? Look closer.

This metal cap covers the pipe which once carried the artesian water, and presumably could still carry it. This is near Lino’s childhood neighborhood, and he walked by here on the way to elementary school every day. He remembers that this well was open during the Second World War, with a big tank set up to collect the water. Considering the bombs falling on Mestre (crucial railway node and near the industrial zone), the risk of losing water from the aqueduct was not to be taken lightly. I think it would be an excellent idea to open this again. There are plenty of dehydrated people who pass by here every day.

This is a very rough sketch of the water-tank-and-faucets set up on the artesian well in Campazzo San Sebastiano. As Lino recalls it, the tank was sitting on sawhorses, or some supporting structure (not shown). The tank was filled by means of a tube attached to the fountain, and the water from the tank filled two long, closed metal tubes extending from both sides. Faucets were punched into these tubes. There was an overflow trough below the faucets, and an overflow tube from the top of the tank emptied the excess water into the trough. The excess water flowed away toward one of the still-open “gatoli,” or drains, that once conveyed rainwater to a subterranean cistern, as written about in my earlier post. Women brought their cooking pots, buckets, whatever container was called for, and filled up.

One is strangely tempted to bring a set of strong pliers…One is strangely not tempted to be arrested and hauled away.

Campo Sant’Agnese has a real, if decommissioned, well (background), and the scar of something (foreground) that looks very like a well. Perhaps this was one of those described by Tassini (translated by me): “In the 1500’s a well was drilled of the type called artesian. Marin Sanuto writes that ‘on July 8, 1533 there came to the Colegio sier Vincenzo Zorzi, sier Polo Loredan, sier Almoro’ Morexini Proveditori de Comun saying that following the orders of the Serenissimo and the most illustrious Signoria, they went to see the well in the district of Sant’ Agnese…'” He goes on to say that the engineers had dug to a depth of 16 “passi,” and had found fresh water. (A Venetian “passo” was equivalent to 1.738 meters, or 5.7 feet. Therefore they hit the water table at 91.2 feet down.) There’s more.

Campo Sant’ Agnese on a tranquil summer day. It wasn’t so tranquil on an unspecified day in 1866 when a crew was digging a well in a little garden attached to a brewery here and they hit water. Tassini: “A column of mud and sand, freed by the water and gas from the turbid strata pierced by the drill, hurled itself 40 meters (131 feet) in the air, deluging this material on the church as well as the nearby buildings and damaging them because of the collapse of the underlying terrain.” No report on the effect on the beer.

Most of the fountains that we see today around the city running day and night are supplied by the city aqueduct. My next post will reveal the dazzling engineering of the historic — pre-20th century — Venetian aqueduct, but at the moment I want to acknowledge the burbling municipal H2O that has revived countless tourists.

As here. Filling up your own bottle is an excellent way to avoid paying the exorbitant prices for bottled water.

Thirsty dogs just have to figure out how to drink from a falling jet of water. It’s not that hard, but if I had a dog I’d definitely carry around a collapsible bowl. I mean, come on.

But certainly we’re all grateful for the running water. At least when the water IS running.

There is a number of fountains that are permanently dry, turned off, extinguished, whatever the correct term is. If you’re thirsty, seeing a fountain with no water appears to be something between a mirage and a deliberate affront.

However, there are some fountains, such as this one near SS. Giovanni and Paolo, that flow more or less briskly during the summer. The reason for closing some fountains between December and March is precisely to save water, seeing that the need for water isn’t as urgent when it’s freezing cold and there are relatively few tourists around, and those that are around aren’t perishing of thirst.

Then there are fountains which have been closed summer and winter. This was running just fine till a few years ago, and even though I live nearby, and could easily run home for a drink, you have no idea how often on a sweltering summer day I would gladly avail myself of some water. But no. It must be part of the group of 70 fountains which have been closed because they weren’t in high-traffic tourist areas (a statistic dating from 2008). Since then, enough of the city has become a high-traffic tourist area, especially when the sun is at its broilingest, to nullify that exception. Open the dang fountain already!

The entire world seems to have given up on this fountain, just two steps from our house in an unimportant little courtyard. Until recently it was running (well, dripping) just fine, minding its own business. Then it was sealed, and now this.

Many people have asked me the obvious question: All that water running all the time, isn’t it a tremendous waste? Veritas, the water company, says that it isn’t. I suppose they would. I haven’t found a contrasting opinion to that, but I have had to suspend more research because life is short.

The logical solution, as people occasionally suggest, is to install faucets so that only the water that’s needed at the moment comes pouring out. Simple? Of course not!

An Italian member of an online political forum, who goes by the name “gava,” wrote (translation by me): “My project to install faucets to eliminate waste of precious drinkable water from the fountains is not easy to realize.

“In Venice there are about 200 fountains which consume about 800 cubic meters of water a day (800,000 liters, or 211,337 US gallons). A considerable amount, there’s no doubt. But let’s think for a moment, the water comes directly from the spring at Scorze’, it has no costs for pumping or purification, they only add some chlorine.

“Furthermore, the installation of a switch would increase the bacterial load in the first stretch of pipe, and the controls made by ASL (the local health department) demonstrate this. Practically speaking, to install faucets would give a tiny economic advantage and many disadvantages, from the maintenance of the pushbuttons (of the faucet) which are subject to frequent breaks, to the presence of bacteria in the first tract of water. (I think he means where the water exits from the faucet, which when the faucet is closed would promote buildup of bacteria.)

“Over the past five years, I’ve seen a maximum of 30 functioning fountains in Venice (note: VeniceWiki has made a map but a quick check shows it is incomplete). Those that have been closed for years may have something more than simple bacteria in the pipes, up to real encrustation. In any case, I still think that the system of filtering and taps could be improved, I don’t want it to be an excuse for throwing water away.”

An unnamed ex-member of this forum replied: “I remember that some time back they started to install pushbuttons but the main problem was that they break really easily, and so a good number of fountains were put back to the old system.”

To complicate matters, Veritas is responsible only for the fountains in the public parks; the others are maintained by “other organs,” which I have not identified. But the fact that all the fountains aren’t managed by the same company means that of course there will be administrative and/or bureaucratic problems involved in any change.

So while we’re all waiting for simplicity and conservation to reign on earth, I suggest you drink the fountain water as much as you can. After all, it’s there for you.