That
sinking feeling
If nothing
is done soon, the palaces and piazzas
of Venice will sink beneath the waves
of the Adriatic. But a proposed £3bn
sea barrier has plunged the city into
a bitter internal dispute about what
should be done, by whom, and when. Geraldine
Bedell dons her wellies and wades into
a storm of controversy
Geraldine Bedell
Sunday December 12, 2004
Observer
It is winter in
Venice and St Mark's Square is puddled,
although it hasn't rained for days.
The water has come roiling up through
the drains, seeping through the stones,
creeping over the banks of the canals.
Stacks of plywood platforms on metal
legs are stacked, school table-like,
around the square; when the water is
inches deep, as it often is, the Venetians
line them up and walk along them to
keep their feet dry.
I am
on my way to see Maria Teresa Brotto,
a civil engineer who thinks she knows
the answer to Venice's flooding problems.
But then, almost everyone in Venice
thinks they know the answer to the flooding.
Few subjects here arouse such passion,
not least because which solution you
favour reveals much about what, and
whom, you think Venice is for. At the
beginning of the last century, St Mark's
Square flooded on average 10 times a
year. Now water seeps into the square
more than 100 times each winter, and
its paving stones are cracked and pulling
apart. Venetians keep a pair of waders
at home and another at the office. Their
calendars show the height of the tides.
There are phone lines for weather updates,
and sirens warn them of 'exceptional'
(waters 110cm above sea level) or 'extreme'
(140cm above) events. They manage to
go on living in their beautiful, drowning
city. Or those who are left do; the
population has halved since the Fifties.
But
everyone agrees that something has to
be done. Salt water is eating into the
buildings as the lagoon follows its
natural destiny, which is to be absorbed
back into the sea. Without human intervention,
Venice would eventually find itself
isolated in a marine bay, exposed to
wild waves.
The
city is subsiding, and always has been,
as coastal sediment settles and the
movement of the earth's crust (on a
geological timescale) pushes this part
of Italy under the Alps. In the past,
the Venetians simply piled new buildings
on the ruins and foundations of earlier
structures, creating a city like a lasagne.
Most people would accept that this is
no longer an option: in the words of
Anna Somers Cocks, chairman of Venice
in Peril: 'The Venice we've got is the
Venice we want.'
The
process of subsidence speeded up in
the 20th century as the result of the
pumping out of water for industries
on the nearby mainland. Too late it
became apparent that the aquifers under
the lagoon and the islands were a kind
of cushion, buoying Venice. In the last
century the land dropped 23cm in relation
to the sea, and, although the pumping
has stopped, the damage is done.
Natural
changes in the surrounding landscape,
such as erosion of salt marshes, along
with man-made ones such as the cutting
of a deep navigation channel for oil
tankers, have conspired to exacerbate
the tendency for the lagoon to take
in water from the sea. And then there
is global warming. The eyes of the world
are on Venice not simply as the repository
of some of the most stunning art and
architecture ever created, nor merely
as an area of outstanding biodiversity,
but also because the city faces problems
that may soon confront many other places
as waters rise around the globe.
Maria
Teresa Brotto is a glamorous figure
in suede trousers and high-heels, with
a deep tan, a ready smile and perfect
English. Brotto is the co-ordinator
of the final design of the Venice barrier,
and her name arouses strong reactions
in Venice.
The
Venice flood barrier has been decades
in the planning, has been endlessly
debated, and remains intensely controversial.
Unlike in London and Rotterdam, where
the barriers created anxieties but the
population was broadly willing to trade
some environmental impact for safety,
the Venice barrier (or, strictly speaking,
four barriers, which will be strung
between the islands that separate the
lagoon from the Adriatic) has split
the city down the middle.
Opinion
polls sometimes show Venetians broadly
in favour, sometimes against (depending,
usually, how the question is framed).
Brotto assures me most people want the
barrier, but acknowledges that 'those
who are against it are very noisy'.
They have, she says, created a false
dichotomy between the barrier and other,
more gradualist measures to deal with
flooding. Both are necessary, she insists;
and the consortium of engineering and
construction companies which is building
the barriers is also raising canal banks
in the city, restoring salt marshes
in the lagoon, and dealing with the
legacy of industrial pollution.
Brotto
admits there will be some environmental
disruption during construction - 'but
we are taking mitigating measures, such
as using an ecological dredger to reduce
turbidity'. She is adamant, however,
that the gates remain necessary. They
will be closed, she anticipates, five
to seven times a year. 'With this solution,
we will solve all problems for Venice
and the other settlements around the
lagoon. Definitely.'
'So,'
says Gherardo Ortalli, professor of
medieval history at Venice University,
'are you going to write that the barriers
will solve all the problems for Venice?
That is what the world wants to believe.
A lovely story with a happy ending.'
I have
come to meet Professor Ortalli at a
palazzo close to the Grand Canal, the
headquarters of an ancient institute
of arts, letters and science, of which
he is the administrator. In the fading
light of a winter afternoon there is
something gloomy about the building,
an impression that Ortalli's mood does
nothing to dispel. 'This town is ending,'
he says. 'When I arrived here 30 years
ago, there were 130,000 inhabitants.
Now we are half that. But the numbers
are not so important. Young people are
being priced out of the city, and those
of us left behind are old and exhausted.'
Venice
is not being saved for its people, Professor
Ortalli believes, but for the tourist
trade, which is not owned by Venetians.
His institute recently bought a palazzo
across the square to prevent its falling,
like so many others, into the hands
of an international hotel group. Every
year, 15m visitors pour into Venice,
where they buy fake Murano glass and
carnival mask souvenirs that Ortalli
says 'are all made in Taiwan'. In his
view, business interests are dictating
the future for Venice in a way that
leaves Venetians with very little control.
Venice
woke up to the grave threat it faced
in the first week of November 1966,
when a violent storm surge from the
Atlantic swept into the city, flooding
it to nearly two metres above sea level.
The population was left with no electricity,
with black oil oozing out of cisterns,
and alleyways strewn with rubbish and
the corpses of pigeons and rats.
The
Italian government designated the safeguarding
of Venice a national problem. The possibility
was mooted of a barrier against the
sea (something that had initially been
suggested as early as the 17th century)
and a 'competition of ideas' was instituted.
The winner was an underwater barrier,
which would be invisible most of the
time, but could be lifted to resist
the tide as necessary. Then, in 1984,
a group of Italian construction and
engineering companies was amalgamated
into the Corsorzio Venezia Nuova (CVN),
or Consortium for a New Venice, and
charged with planning and executing
the project.
CVN
is the organisation for which Maria
Teresa Brotto works. Depending on your
point of view, it is either (as the
Italian government insists, and the
European competition commission appeared
to accept in May this year) the only
body capable of managing such a complicated
scheme; or it is a private sector monopoly
whose responsibility for planning the
solution is in conflict with its role
in carrying it out.
Opposition
to the barriers divides broadly into
three camps. Some Venetians consider
the gates unnecessary and believe that
other, less radical measures could prevent
most of the flooding. Others argue that
the 'softer' measures should at least
be tried first. And some, who are not
necessarily against a barrier in theory,
are nevertheless opposed to the way
in which the current barrier system
has been handled.
'The
safeguarding of Venice was handed over
to a private group with a monopoly,'
says Ortalli. 'They are legal interests,
not bandits, but they are working for
themselves. And they have come up with
a solution that is enormously expensive.
If it had been possible to find a more
expensive solution, they would have
done it. The expense is part of the
attraction.'
Many
in Venice share Professor Ortalli's
view that, 'we are no longer a self-determining
town'. (CVN, Maria Teresa Brotto is
quick to point out, is not a law unto
itself, but comes under the jurisdiction
of the Venice Water Authority, the local
branch of the ministry of public works.
Its opponents argue that this group
of private companies is so wealthy,
so powerful and has so much leeway to
act that this nominal local control
is more or less irrelevant.) For Venetians,
with their history as a glittering,
world-dominating republic, the sense
that matters are out of their hands
is particularly painful. Venetian politicians
have always had an uneasy relationship
with Rome, not helped at present by
the fact that Venice is centre-left,
and the government, under Berlusconi,
is not.
The
following morning I take a boat out
to the northernmost of the three inlets
through which the lagoon flushes into
the sea, and the sea washes back into
the lagoon. The Lido inlet is the closest
to Venice, and the largest: so large,
in fact, that it will be divided into
two when the barriers are built, with
a man-made island in the middle. Work
was given the go-ahead in April 2003,
but there still isn't much to see: a
small cement batching plant on the island
in the distance, a caterpillar truck
moving stones along one of the groynes.
We
bob about in the motorboat near where
the man-made island will be. Brotto
has told me that three different architectural
teams at the University of Venice are
working on schemes to make the island
attractive. But to some locals, that
isn't good enough. The island will be
built over a sandbank where, traditionally,
Venetians like to come at weekends in
summer and fish for razor clams. That
this ancient tradition in the lagoon
is about to disappear symbolises for
many Venetians the way that they are
being discounted. 'None of those people
in the Consorzio is Venetian,' one local
told me. 'I don't suppose they've ever
been out there. They have no idea of
the real pleasures of the lagoon: they
aren't connected to Venetian culture.'
The
barrier design features 78 hinged gates
that will normally lie flat on the seabed,
filled with water. When required - when
Venice is about to experience a flood
tide - they will be pumped full of air
and rise to an angle of 30 degrees to
hold back the sea. Figures for the cost
of this change all the time, but Maria
Teresa Brotto told me the scheme is
currently budgeted at €4bn (£2.7bn).
It is estimated the barrier will cost
€8m a year to maintain.
This
is an enormous amount of money, and
many in Venice are suspicious of such
a large investment in something that
has never been tried before, which poses
enormous engineering challenges and
which cannot be modified. Giorgio Sarto
is a green party politician, who represented
the Venice metropolitan area as senator
in Rome from 1996 to 2001. 'First,'
he says, 'we should have had medicine,
then surgery.'
In
his view, there were simpler strategies
that could have been explored first,
such as making the three inlets to the
Adriatic shallower; positioning breakwaters
against the sirocco wind, often a major
factor in flooding; and strengthening
groynes.
This,
he argues, would have reduced the water
level by 20cm, so buying time for Venice
to explore alternative schemes that
were adjustable and reversible. (One
much discussed option would be ships
moored at the inlets, which could be
filled with water and sunk when flooding
threatened.)
Environmentalists
are worried about the effect that closing
the gates might have on the lagoon.
They fear that raising the barriers
(in a 1966-type event, they would be
shut for about 20 hours) will reduce
the tidal flushing system and damage
a complex ecology. More commonly, the
barriers would be shut for four to five
hours, which most scientists agree would
have around the same impact as a low
tide in summer - in other words, not
much. But some scientists take a gloomier
view and, until it happens, no one can
be completely sure. The barrier, meanwhile,
will be embedded in concrete, and irreversible.
There
is no doubt that the engineering challenges
are formidable. No other barrier scheme
like this has been tried anywhere in
the world. CVN has experimented with
a prototype gate and is constantly working
on refining the design in the laboratory;
Brotto is entirely confident that the
barriers will work. But not everyone
agrees.
In
1996, the Italian government commissioned
two reports on the project: one from
the Environmental Impact Study (EIS),
and a shadow report from an 'International
College of Experts', including scientists
from Brussels, the Netherlands and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
I happen to be reading the EIS report
when Andreina Zitelli, associate professor
of environmental evaluation at Venice
University, and a key member of the
study, joins me at a table by the Grand
Canal. She turns up her nose. 'This
College of Experts represented nothing
in terms of legal procedure,' she says.
'On the national commission, we had
40 members, of whom 10 dedicated two
years to evaluating all the points.
We read about 11,000 pages and wrote
400 pages. This is the judgment.' It
thuds down in front of me like a telephone
directory.
The
national commission came out against
the barriers; the International College
found in favour. Zitelli is still smarting
at the fact that her group's objections
were not taken seriously. She argues
that the environmental impact of the
construction will be very high, because
deep, transverse channels must be excavated
for the gates' foundations. She enumerates
several technical objections, such as
that 20,000 pilings must be sunk 30m
into the mud, 'and must stay in a straight
line to resist the weight that will
be put on them. But the bottom is not
flat. There are small, discontinuous
lumps of limestone at different levels.
How do you get these pilings straight?
And if the substrata are not stable,
the gates could move apart.'
She
gestures to some gondolas, bobbing about
in front of us on the water. 'You see
those? They don't move in the same way,
at the same rate; they don't reach the
same height. This is called disharmonic
wave resonance, and this disharmony
could be so strong in windy conditions
that the gates could pull apart.' She
is worried too about biological encrustation
under water, which she estimates will
be 'around 30kg per square metre per
year'. I ask if this could stop the
gates working; she shrugs.
She
also points to what she believes are
uncertainties in forecasting when to
raise the gates. 'Computer models predicting
high tides currently have a margin of
error of plus or minus 20cm. Only last
week the sirens failed to predict how
high the tide would go.' (Brotto disputes
these figures, citing a 10cm margin
of error.) 'That means that if you decide
to close for tides of 110cm, the actual
tide could be 90cm or 130cm. During
winter, this includes all medium high
tides in Venice. Today, high tide is
90cm, and there is no flooding. So you
can't accurately predict the tide until
an hour and a half beforehand, but they
will have to decide before that, in
order to warn shipping.'
Brotto
does not accept these figures: she says
that the first information comes in
48 hours before a high tide, and that
'it is possible three hours before the
high tide to have a forecast that is
within 10cm of error, 97 per cent of
the time.' She adds that mathematical
modelling is improving all the time.
Zitelli
concludes that even the International
College of Experts said the project
would need to be reviewed in 2050. 'Yet
this is being sold to us as a project
with a 100-year technical life.'
If
the Venice barriers are completed on
schedule, they will be finished in 2011,
nearly half a century after the 1966
flood. For Dominic Standish, a British
academic and journalist who lives near
Venice (and who has connections with
an international think-tank that has
been linked to the Bush administration's
position on the environment), this represents
an inexcusable delay. 'I feel a little
bit jealous of London for having got
its barrier before these things became
such a political issue,' he says. 'It's
a sign of our times that we feel so
hesitant about protecting something
that is so important in the history
of the world. Governments have now adopted
the precautionary principle: there is
a desire to prove that any action is
risk-free before proceeding. It's a
way for them to seem to be interested
in emotive issues: a way of connecting
with people.'
No
doubt the sums of money involved have
troubled successive Italian governments.
But Italy's often sclerotic politics
has not helped: in the Seventies, there
were doubts that Italy would even survive
as a state; in the Eighties, shifting
coalitions were preoccupied by their
internal state, as Christian democracy
and Communism faded and declined. In
1998, a Green environment minister halted
the project; the Amato government subsequently
revived it with conditions that took
account of some of the environmentalists'
concerns. It is finally happening now
because Silvio Berlusconi has based
his plan for economic recovery on the
implementation of a number of grand
projects.
Throughout
this, as Green MP Giorgio Sarto admits,
the centre-left has been hopelessly
divided, not only on the wisdom of having
the barrier at all (which, given the
technical arguments raging around it,
is understandable), but also on whether
to oppose the role of CVN.
As
water seeps into the city, life is draining
out of it. Today, CVN rents a palace
belonging to General Insurance. There
are no insurance companies working in
the city any more: few major employers
at all, in fact. Even the public-private
partnership responsible for urban maintenance
is moving out to the mainland. Anna
Somers Cocks, of Venice in Peril, believes
all this is directly related to the
flooding, and that if the waters could
be controlled, businesses might start
investing once more. 'How acceptable
is it for Venice to flood? My view is
not at all. It is damaging not just
to the buildings but to the way the
city is lived in. The only way you can
deal with Venice in the short term is
to close the gates relatively frequently.
Then do you get a stinking, rotting
lagoon? The data differs.'
For
some environmental groups, that's too
big a risk, certainly at this stage.
Some would rather see pavements raised
first, although pavements have already
been raised as far as most architects
and art historians are comfortable with,
and any further lifting would spoil
the proportions of the architecture,
making doorways impossibly low.
Until
recently, until post-war industrialisation
and port development, environment and
architecture have lived in symbiosis
in Venice. But that point of equilibrium
appears now to have passed, and what
needs to give depends on one's priorities.
The trouble, though, is that tampering
with one end of things affects everything
else: Venice is only Venice thanks to
the vigorous natural dynamics of the
lagoon system.
Most
scientists, it is probably fair to say,
think that the gates are a solution,
certainly for the time being. Maria
Teresa Brotto argues that they will
work 'up to a 60cm rise in sea levels.
There is considerable dispute about
how far global warming will cause sea
levels to rise, but if it is as much
as 60cm, we will also lose Ferrara and
Ravenna. Venice will be the only dry
place in the northern Adriatic.' For
Anna Somers Cocks, too, the argument
that global warming may make the gates
obsolete by the middle of the century
is a red herring, 'because what happens
between now and then? Flooding 80 times
a year and the constant worry of another
extreme event?'
A three-year
collaboration between Cambridge University
and Corila, the Venice-based lagoon
research constortium, resulted this
autumn in the publication of a book,
The Science of Saving Venice, by Caroline
Fletcher and Jane da Mosto, summarising
everything currently known about the
ecology of the Venice lagoon. A wonderfully
clear statement of what scientists currently
understand, this eschews the political
posturing of so much of the debate about
the barrier. The authors do, however,
note rather tartly: 'It is remarkable
that an enormous amount of data collected
by numerous institutions (but mainly
by the Venice Water Authority) has not
been circulated nor made readily accessible
to the scientific community, nor the
public at large. This has obstructed
the comparison of research results and
findings from different modelling approaches
and the development of a non-ideological,
constructive, science-based debate.'
So
much money has been funnelled through
CVN and the Venice Water Authority into
research that it is difficult to find
scientists locally who are genuinely
independent. And with the fruits of
all this research not widely disseminated,
there remain engineering and ecological
uncertainties.
For
Anna Somers Cocks, though, much of the
opposition - whether it takes the form
of environmental or engineering objections
- is rooted in ideology: 'an objection
to private companies, a sense that there
is a capitalist plot'. She thinks that
antipathy to the barriers is symptomatic
of Venetians' failure to face up to
the reality of their future. Since the
lagoon would, left to its own devices,
merge with the sea eventually, Venice
is faced with an unpalatable choice:
abandon itself to the tides, or wall
itself off, and turn the lagoon into
a lake.
'The
greens say if you fix the lagoon, you
fix the problem,' says Jane da Mosto.
'But it's not an either/or; not least
because one day we're almost certainly
going to have to turn the lagoon into
a lake. We need to know everything we
can about its ecology by then. The more
we know, the more we realise we need
to know, especially given the decreasing
role of natural dynamics in the lagoon.'
The
barriers will almost certainly be built,
even though no one yet knows who will
operate them, nor how the government
will manage the funding (currently still
only being allocated on a year-by-year
basis). Romano Prodi, who will oppose
Berlusconi at the next election, recently
came out in their favour. Venice will
hold back the tides for a little longer
- and after that, who knows? (Engineers
in London are already working on the
successor to the Thames Barrier; in
Rotterdam, they are planning for the
next barrier but one.)
The
tides of economic globalisation are
another matter. At present, Venice is
a city close to being swamped by the
international tourist trade, and finding
no other identity it can assert. If
it is to avoid being turned into merely
the museum quarter of the Venice metropolitan
area, it has to engage with globalisation,
not avoid it. In theory, it ought to
be easy enough for Venice (rather as
Dubai has done) to offer incentives
for appropriate businesses, those based
mainly on computers and the exchange
of ideas, to set up in the city. But
it remains to be seen whether there
is the political will to engage with
modernity in this way.
For
Professor Ortalli, the city is already
becoming like Babylon. 'Venice cannot
survive,' he says, standing on the palazzo
steps. 'I think it has died already.
I am spending a lot of time fighting
this barrier not to save Venice, but
to save my soul.'
|
