The Lagoon
“Excitement shivers
through the crew. Only minutes ago, with
the dawning rays of morning, the lights of the Republic, ahead to the west, were
spotted by lookouts high above the deck in the rigging. With this news, the strokes of our fifty oars
seemed to have gained strength. Ahead, the
Lido inlet to the lagoon awaits. Almost
home after years away and these months at sea, there is good reason for our elation. Our journey aboard the galley, Draga, has been arduous and throughout fraught with danger. Ours has been a special mission, secretly assigned
by the Doge Dandolo himself during the sacking and wanton destruction of Constantinople by crusaders. Our cargo had
to be saved from the ravage of booty-hungry knights. Otherwise, like so much of the city’s
artwork, our
prize would have been melted down for the value of its metal. God be praised, the eight crates lashed to the deck beside me are proof of our success. In the dark of night, with my own hands, I stealthily helped remove them from their perch high above the private boxes of the Hippodrome racetrack. Their size had presented an unexpected problem. This drastic situation called for desperate measures. Like some headsman, though at first I hesitated, I severed their heads to get them down. It was the only way. They will need mending, but I was careful to make each cut at the same place. Possibly collars can be added to each of the four to obscure where their heads were removed. Only then will these four horses, the “Triumphal Quadriga”, be whole once again.”
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| The Constantinople Stallions with Collars |
We managed
to arrive in Venice in
the heat and humidity of August. If you
were to discount the elbow to elbow masses disgorged daily from cruise ships and weren’t
confident your accommodations had air conditioning, maybe even the luxury of an
elevator, forget about going at this time of year. The air limp, conditions
are simply uncomfortable. Our wanderlust
won out, however, and discretion notwithstanding, we caught a high-speed train from
Naples. At speeds occasionally reaching
250 km/hour, a little over five hours later found us at Santa Lucia Station,
Venice. Outside the terminal, the Grand
Canal lay at our feet. It teamed with
activity. Chaotic in its beauty, boat
traffic hurried by, people headed every which way, classic Chris-Craft style
water taxies milled about, the dome of San Simeone Piccolo on the opposite bank
rose heavenward, while to the left, the Ponte degli Scalzi footbridge led into
the heart of Venice. We’d been to Venice
a few times, but each time the majesty of this scene causes us to pause in appreciation of its
magnificence. Minutes later, our
adventure began. We were off by
Vaporetto to our Booking.com home, our accommodation by the Rialto Bridge for a
few days.
Venice is a city built by refugees from the mainland in the 5th
century AD. They were fleeing successive
waves of Visigoth and Hun invasions.
Attila the Hun in fact and his horde of marauders from present day
Hungary. Venice is not a single island
but a series of islands, more than one hundred all told. Motivated by necessity and spurred-on by desperation,
these early settlers began to build first by driving 60 foot long pilings
made from the trunks of water-resistant alder trees into the mud of the swampy
marshlands. How they managed to pound these
poles into the ground back then, I’ve no idea.
It is estimated that there are 8-16 million of them, so close together
that they touch. Foundations were then
constructed on plates of limestone placed atop these pilings. To drain the area, they also dug thousands of
canals. Thus, it is a city not quite
afloat, more like suspended on poles over a thousand years old. Unique as it is, it’s no wonder that the lagoon and part of
the city have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Clearly, Venice will forever be linked
with water. In its beginning, water
proved to be a buffer against barbarians.
Later Venice’s ships and
the sea served to build it into a wealthy
republic. Today, in a turn of events, this
same water threatens its existence. As
high and dry as we found it, all is not well.
With water levels
rising along with a gradual subsidence in Venice due to the amount of water pumped
from the aquifer beneath it, Venice
and neighboring islands face a mounting crisis.
An October 2018 flood saw three-quarters of the “floating city” underwater. City records show the sea level has
risen a total of 10 inches since 1870. Around
half this amount is due to subsidence. Further measurements show that the sea level
is rising 0.1 inches a year. To
do nothing was therefore not an option for some experts argued that Venice would be gone by the year
2100.
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| Life Goes On |
That October flood, reportedly the worst in a decade, reached a high-water mark of 5.1 feet (in
way of
comparison, a Nov 1966 flood reached 6.4 feet). Flooding, though not new, is an annual event. A 12th-century prison occupied the lower level
of the Doge Palace where inmates suffered from poor conditions including
extremes in weather and occasional floods. As the water rose, many would die restrained
in their chains. These days, as June
through November mark hurricane season in the Caribbean, autumn to spring mark the
"acqua alta” flood season in Venice. This is a period of exceptionally high tides
in the Adriatic Sea. Some have learned
to adapt. In Venice proper for instance, on Calle Lunga Santa
Maria Formosa, only steps away from the church of Santa Maria Formosa, you will
find the Libreria Aqua Alta (Bookstore of High Water). It is unique, a bookstore like no other, for it has resigned
itself to constant flooding. Its over-stuffed
rooms are stacked wall-to-wall with
books, magazines, maps, and other curio. Due to the recurring floods, these picturesque
piles are all kept inside bathtubs, waterproof bins, and in one room a
full-size gondola. Unfortunately, the
majority of the city’s inhabitants, far less fortunate, can’t exploit the
situation and manipulate it into a tourist attraction.
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| The "Acqua Alta" |
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| The Waterproof Bookstore |
On our tour of Saint Mark’s, where we got to see the real stallions of
Constantinople, our guide pointed out the flood level watermarks on the walls. Apparently, they have become tourist
attractions and are now included in the tour.
In conversation with her and others,
we learned that the project
underway to address this city crisis was also in trouble.
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| Our Tour of St. Mark's Began Outside |
In hopes of addressing this growing threat, in 2003, Italy
began building a massive flood barrier designed to isolate the 210
square miles of
the Venetian Lagoon from the adjacent Adriatic Sea. The project is known as MOSE, an acronym for Modulo Sperimentale
Elettromeccanico. In
English this works out to be Experimental Electromechanical Module. I’m not particularly keen on the title which emphasizes
the word “Experimental”. It may be too
late for experiments, which at least to me, imply tentative actions and
especially an uncertainty in the outcome.
And as acronyms go, the choice of the letters MOSE appear to have been cleverly
contrived to identify with the prophet Moses.
Experimental or not, it is one of the largest civil engineering projects
in the world today with currently $6.5 billion already spent (up from its $1.8
billion total project cost estimate).
In rough comparison, as massive projects go, the Apollo Project that put
men on the moon from 1960-1973 cost $28 billion. The name, MOSE, seems apropos for it reminds
us, which I think is the intent, of the biblical story of Moses dividing the
Red Sea. From reports, it may indeed
take another miracle to restrain the tidal waters of the Adriatic.
Seemingly essential for the city’s survival, the sea wall project
has been shrouded in controversy and pummeled with criticism. Corruption, political scandal, pollution, and
engineering problems (or should I call them busted experiments) abound. Things got so wrong that in 2014 former Mayor Giorgio Orsoni was
arrested along with 35 other people on bribery and cover-up charges. Thus goes Italy, if not most of the world,
into the haunts of human frailty. Now years
behind
schedule and well over budget, work completion is being accelerated as if once
again Egyptians were at their heels. Originally
set to be operational around 2011, some believe that if that miracle of
miracles happens and all goes well from here on out, it will not be completed
until 2022. It certainly would have
saved the day, as recently as the 29 October 2018 flood. As the project continues to languish, there
have been reports that mold inside the gate maintenance passages are 5 cm deep in
places and marine life encrustations are eroding those underwater structures
already in place. The design consists of
78 retractable flap gates stationed at the three inlets to the lagoon from the
Adriatic - the Lido and Malamocco Inlets on either side of the Lido barrier
island, and the Chioggia Inlet farther south. When the tide reaches 43 inches, which happens
around four times a year, the gates will fill
with air and rise above the
water's surface to protect the lagoon from flooding. When the tide recedes, the gates fill with
water, fold on their hinges, and lower themselves back into their underwater cradles
on the seabed. In theory, it sounds
pretty straightforward.
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| MOSE Tidal System Gates |
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| MOSE Lagoon Inlets |
My information source, La Stampa Newspaper,
reports there is talk of dismantling
the barrier project entirely. Though
unlikely at this point, their banter has justification, mainly the mounting technical
issues and certainly concerns over mismanagement and skyrocketing costs. Inspections show that many of the gates have
eroded, and their massive hinges appear at risk of cracking. Sediment deposits and mussels, which grow
abundantly in the lagoon and which we so enjoyed as delicious cozze on
our plates while there, are to blame. Maybe
we should all do our part and eat more mussels. Then again maybe the project engineers should
have realized that sea creatures like to attach themselves to underwater
structures and in shallow, muddy lagoons, tidal driven sediment abounds and can
settle anywhere.
We noticed how problematic shifting sediment was
ourselves. On our trip to Burano,
days into our stay, I recall pointing out how clearly marked our ferry route
seemed to be. In fact, all boat traffic,
private and commercial, stayed between channel markers. Wooden poles lashed together above the surface, called bricole, serve
as the “white lines” on either side of these water highways. They clearly
marked the intended water routes between islands. The lagoon is
shallow with mudbanks that frequently shift with tides and
currents. Travel outside these well-marked lanes comes at the risk
of running aground, especially at low tide. To ensure unobstructed
passage these channels must frequently be dredged to keep them navigable.
On a
more technical note, MOSE
gates already in the water cannot rise into position due to various technical
problems. Those on land, as they awaited
installation, rusted in the salty air, despite their special silicone varnish
which seagulls liked to peck off. The marine environment, as you’d expect, is
having a corrosive field day. Why this
is, is not exactly explained beyond “we have the best coatings that technology
can provide.” Here again, oceans,
and I’m pretty sure seas too, contain plenty of corrosive salt. Who would have suspected that? The article then went on to say that to complete
gate installation and repair the structures already ruined will require the
handsome sum of an additional 700 million Euros plus at least 105 million Euros
per year to guarantee their function and maintenance. I can easily imagine a small army of scuba
divers and a fleet of small boats hard at work as part of the 105 million in
maintenance. Now doesn’t that sound like
a cushy lifetime job and all the cozze you can possibly eat! But there is more disappointing news. The 156 hinges
that connect the gates to their housings – each one weighing 36 tons – are at
extremely high risk (a probability of 66 to 99%) of being unusable. Ouch.
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| Water Highway "Bicole" |
There was also a lock debacle. When the gates deploy and the lagoon is
sealed, accommodation for transport shipping was made. On the idea of the Suez or Panama Canals, here
a single lock permitted entry to and exit from the lagoon. After it was built, it took the collapse of
the lock gates in 2015 to discover that water pressure on these gates was
too great for them to operate.
Apparently, a measly 18 million Euros later, the problem was
corrected. You would have thought that
by now, designing a lock gate was a simple engineering problem. As one sarcastic critic, freelance journalist Erla Zwingle noted,
during the calculations, the engineer may have been distracted by the delivery
of a pizza. Hopefully, at least when it
comes to pizza, he got what he ordered. It
would appear that it may have been easier to get to the moon!
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| MOSE Sluice Gates |
La Stampa continued:
“An inspection has shown that the MOSE hinges, underwater for
three and a half years, are already in an advanced state of corrosion. Tests in
recent months showed gates unable to rise, while others cannot retract due to
the accumulation of sediment, and there are several problems with the pipe
system, and one of the housing structures in the Chioggia Inlet has exploded. A
special boat … it failed its first attempt at lifting one of the
barriers.”
That “jack-up” boat is
interesting. It is a special boat
designed to transport flap gates for maintenance to and from the Venice Arsenale,
the historic facility in the city where Venice’s naval armadas of old were
built and where Galileo once worked as a
naval engineer. The boat came in at a whopping price tag of 52
million Euros then failed its first attempt at lifting one of the barriers. Hopefully, it was warrantied! It has heavy weightlifting to do, for each massive
gate (87 ft long, 65 ft wide
and 13 ft thick) weighs 282
tons. Many costly redesign modifications
later, it finally worked and stepped-up to replace a stand-in barge system in
the final phase of gate installations.
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| The Jack-up Boat Underway |
The last
of the 78 gates was
installed on the seafloor on 30 Jan 2019.
It occurred without fanfare and absent celebration. By that point, the project’s backstory has
accumulated a total of 5,740 days, almost 16 years, since May 14, 2003, when the
foundation stone was laid in the presence of then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. No bottles of Asti or Prosecco were reported to have christened this
final behemoth gate before it was lowered to its resting place along the
barrier foundation as might have been expected.
It was reported that even top management remained low key and decided not
to celebrate this symbolic accomplishment. After all, hadn’t there been 77 previously? And I don’t recall mention of a Hebrew celebration after Moses parted
the Red Sea and they’d made their escape from the Egyptians. I suspect that perhaps a bottle or two may
have been uncorked in the 0500 dark of morning when that last gate was
installed but by workers who’d seen the project through all those years.
Yet even as symbolic as the installation of the 78th
gate may have been, MOSE is not finished. There is more ahead especially when the
sluice gates, like drunken sailors, are not able to stand up. Only those on the north side of the Lido have been complete
for years. Four of them were raised for
the first time back in 2013. A couple of
years ago there was a test to lift all of them together that ended in
difficulty. Sediment had settled on the
housing floor and prevented the last three from descending into their supports
completely. Well, for what it is worth,
I guess raising them is more critical to the wellbeing of the city then getting
them completely back into their holders.
Somewhere
in the lifecycle of this project, from concept formulation, on to system design, planning, and eventual
program execution, something fell through the cracks. It seems possible a lot fell through some big
cracks. Problems that raise their heads
far downstream like a specially designed lift boat that doesn’t work or weak
lock gates, are costly to correct. A
software tool, something like Microsoft Project, for example, might have proved
handy especially in monitoring long-lead critical path development where
slippage in one area causes events to impact other program activities and cascade
through a project of compounding
complexity like the
aftermath of a bowling ball meeting that first pin. Maybe the project team or team of teams used them
but still, there were flaws. Wouldn’t you
think it might have been important to ensure that the power station was operational
in advance of the day when it would be needed to power the gates? Instead, the underwater gates had plenty of
time to corrode as they bathed in salt water and became home to humble mussels
as they awaited the plant’s completion.
But it’s easy for critics to cherry-pick events and as we say “play
Monday morning quarterback” after the fact.
It seems MOSE has deep pockets which to this point have saved the day. Money to fix and patch flowed and continues to
flow as easily as the incessant tide. In
the future, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a tax on visitors implemented by
authorities. Someone has to pay, and
costs are usually passed on to the “consumer”.
Welcome to Venice, where soon, like Disneyland, you may need a ticket to
get in.
As MOSE
is testament to, giant projects don’t always go smoothly. Some in fact, never pay off. Take California’s High Speed Rail Project as
an example. Its plug was pulled after doubling its cost estimate,
mismanagement, misleading rhetorical chicanery, and zero promised commercial buy-in. Similarly, the play-out so far for MOSE has
been overshadowed by a dark comedy of errors under the direction of a corrupt consortium. Work continues in haste today by a
reconstituted team of contractors and management. The spring of 2020 will hopefully see the beginning
of the first tests of the entire system and the beginning of the end, the
successful end, of the project. In the
meantime, be sure to bring galoshes, if not hip waders, along during flood
season until at some point corks fly in real celebration.
The real test will come, however, when rising Adriatic
tides again threaten Venice, Saint Marks Square, the Basilica, and the four
stallions tucked away in its attic. As
for it paying off, we’ll just have to wait and see if MOSE comes through when
the call comes to flip the switch. Whether
it be the vacuum of space or the hostile aquatic realm of the sea of the planet
we inhabit, how arrogant it is of us to believe we can master either and
control the forces of nature. In the case
of MOSE, however, we may be lucky to succeed, if only for a few hours at a
time.
Written on the Road …
From That Rogue Tourist
Paolo
