Venetians Call On (MOSE)S To Save Them From Drowning
On 12 November, the city of Venice suffered the worst flood in more than half a century. Water rose to 187 cm, inundating streets and squares, causing unprecedented damage to historical landmarks such as St Mark’s Basilica, local businesses, residential buildings and warehouses.
And when you live on a ground floor of any kind – whether of a modest residential building or of a Venetian palazzo – and several feet of salty water rush through your living room and kitchen, permanently damaging floors and furniture, and you need to stay up until 2am in the morning to clean up the mess with buckets and electrical water pumps, knowing that all of this might happen again and again, in a day, in a week, or in a month time, you realise that this is not funny at all.
On that night, and on the following days, Venetians of my generation, alongside those of younger and older ones, have all massively called on Facebook to express their anger and puzzlement via messages, videos, pictures and updates of the urgent situation of having their homes, offices, restaurants, shops, flooded by water, in an almost post-apocalyptic scenario. We aimed to express solidarity with each other for something we cannot really put our finger on… and as the world watched powerlessly while the ‘jewel’ of Venice was being put to the test by the worst acqua alta since 1966, a feeling of sadness and anger invaded our hearts.
Mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, firstly blamed ‘climate change’ for the disaster that caused damages for hundreds of millions of euros, and forced the Italian government to declare a state of national emergency.
Scrolling the news on various international newspapers, I am saddened to see how the the city of Venice is presented in this latest Italian drama. An article from the New York Times ‘discourages’ tourists from visiting the city during the months of November and December, to avoid catching acqua alta, with all the nuisances that this climatic condition entails for travelers.
With all due respect to tourism – a great source of prosperity for Venice and its economy – what can be said about its residents, who don’t have the luxury of taking ‘a break’ from the city over the winter months, and who have to live the city day by day, and to coexist with the threat of ever-higher tides, day after day, year after year?
Yes! We, Venetians, exist. We are real.
And, it’s true, we have thigh-high rubber boots in the closet, ready to be extracted from under a shelf and promptly worn, as soon as the unsettling sound of a siren announcing acqua alta pierces through the unusually silent, almost padded, winterly venetian atmosphere.
And, yes! Most of us have piled up in the storage room a few bulkheads made of robust metal, ready to be affixed to doors and windows, when the forecast says that high tide is on its way. Sadly, bulkheads weren’t enough on Tuesday 12th of November, as the small streets – the Venetian calli – turned into canals, and the water overflowed from the lovely paratie, inundating the ground floors of houses, hotels, shops and restaurants.
Residents of Venice are puzzled, outraged and angry because the engineering project that has started to be built over fifteen years ago hasn’t yet come to life – in spite of the enormous public financing that the Italian government has rendered available for it.
What happened to MOSE – literally the Experimental Electromechanical Module – the system of retractable dams that should protect the city from the long-standing and ever-present menace of high tides?
The construction of the complex system of mobile steel barriers, for which the Italian government has promised resources for a total of more of € 5billion, isn’t yet complete. Private consortium Venezia Nuova began working on it back in 2003, after having been assigned the task of realising the innovative, previously untested project of a system of retractable barriers that should, when not in use, lay on the lagoon’s seabed.
The likely reasons for the delay in its realization are as predictable as you might expect: corruption, bureaucracy, alongside technical difficulties.
In 2014, a corruption scandal internal to the consortium consistently slowed down the works, forcing the central government to take control of the project, while the heads of the consortium were being substituted. Since then, progress has been made, however, the 78 steel barriers that should protect Venice from flooding, are still helplessly lying down on the lagoon’s seabed and should become operational only by 2022.
I decided to sit down Giovanni Cecconi. Mr Cecconi is a Venetian engineer who has worked on MOSE as senior hydraulic until 2015, and now directs WIGMAN, a Local Community Association that aims to protect and safeguard the exceptional ecological environment of Venice and its lagoon, by intensifying its interconnection with the social and cultural identity of the city and its residents.
Mr Cecconi is of the opinion that the only way to work around issues of corruption, fraud and bureaucracy that have consistently slowed down the construction of the crucial infrastructure over the last 15 years, and damaged the image of Italy internationally, is to entrust the management of MOSE to ALMA, a new private – but publicly funded – body where the best specialists and commissioners from the previous superintendence, local and regional authorities, can work together with the citizens to speed up the works and complete the construction of the barriers by 2021.
On November 24, Mr Cecconi created a petition that asks the Italian government to constitute this new local government body – Agenzia Lagunare Magistrato alle Acque – to operationalise MOSE as soon as possible, regenerate Venice and its territory, reconnecting the citizens with the implementation of land policy.
If you’d like to save Venice from drowning… please join the residents in signing WIGMAN Resilience Lab’s petition on Change.org:
Written by: Ambra Guarnieri
Photo Credit: Alessandro Mazzola