World Report: April 6, 2001 Vol.6 No.23

Can Venice Be Saved?

By Laura C. Girardi

Gondoliers paddle sleek boats along some 150 narrow canals and under ancient bridges. Singers serenade tourists who stroll along cobblestone streets to admire 15th century architecture. Venice, built on 118 islands, is a sparkling gem among Italy’s great cities. Its art-filled churches and quaint streets have long made it one of the world’s most beloved places. Ten million people visit Venice each year.

But one of the things that makes Venice so special-its web of waterways-threatens its survival. The water is not just in the lagoon, where it belongs. It’s everywhere!

Venice is sinking, and at the same time, the sea around it is rising. In the fifth century, Venetians set the city in the middle of a lagoon to escape enemies. They built it on millions of wooden planks pounded into marshy ground. Since then the buildings have been slowly sinking. The removal of groundwater by local industry, a practice that finally stopped in the 1970s, made the city sink even faster. It has dropped more than five inches since 1900.

Meanwhile, global climate changes have raised the world’s sea levels by more than four inches this century. For Venice, the combination of sinking ground and rising seas has been disastrous.

In Venice, people travel mainly by water taxi and gondola.

Water Everywhere
Venice has always been plagued by floods. Each year, usually between October and March, strong southeast winds and high tides bring acqua alta (Italian for high water). But as the city sinks and the sea rises, the seasonal floods become worse. The single most devastating flood soaked the city on November 4, 1966. Streets and houses were under more than six feet of water! Landmarks and paintings were damaged. Since then, there have been up to 50 floods a year!

Acqua alta erodes buildings. The saltwater seeps into bricks and weakens them. Venice’s magnificent 900-year-old cathedral, St. Mark’s Basilica, now leans slightly to the left because of its unstable foundation.

Experts warn that Venice may sink an additional eight inches in the next 50 years. Already, many citizens are fleeing to dryer spots on Italy’s mainland. Many residents have abandoned the first floor of their homes. Few young families with kids remain in Venice.

Maskmaker Lorenzo Pedrocco is staying but says the floodwater is a real pain: "If it gets above a certain level, I have to raise up the refrigerator and furniture so they don’t get ruined." Others complain about the smell of the water, which contains waste and lagoon debris.

Tourists read a newspaper while seated on a flooded terrace in 1996.

Is This a Job for Moses?
To save the city, a group called the New Venice Consortium has come up with Project Moses. The $2 billion dam project is named for the biblical figure for whom the Red Sea parted. The plan is to place huge underwater gates at each of the three entrances to the Venice Lagoon. When the water is low, the 79 separate 300-ton flaps would sit on the ocean floor. But when the water rises, the flaps would inflate and rise to block Adriatic Sea water.

The complex plan has been in the works for 10 years, but it has yet to win official approval. Environmentalists, in fact, have fought it. They argue that the gates will have to be closed so often that seawater will not be able to move in and out of the lagoon. This will make the lagoon a stagnant, dirty pool, harming fish and plants that live there.

Project Moses: when the Adriatic Sea rises very high, floodgates would inflate and lift up from the ocean floor. They'd keep seawater out of the lagoon and stop flooding in Venice.

Project Moses’ fate may be in the hands of Italy’s Green Party, an environmentally sensitive political group. Green Party members have suggested other solutions to the high waters. Giorgio Sarto, a Green Party Senator, favors simpler measures, such as continuing to raise streets, restoring eroded parts of the port and cleaning the lagoon. "In order to save Venice, we should first see that the city takes its medicine," he said. "Only as a last resort should it have surgery [like] Project Moses."

On March 15 the Italian government decided to continue studying Project Moses. Maria Teresa Brotto, a hydraulic engineer for the New Venice Consortium, is happy. She has argued that smaller steps are not enough: "People want this problem resolved."