Venice was cut off from the Adriatic Sea it dominated for centuries for the first time on Friday
AT 12.25 on July 10th, something happened that had never happened before. Venice was cut off from the Adriatic Sea it dominated for centuries. Watched by Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, and a bevvy of ministers and officials, all 78 movable sluice gates comprising the MOSE sea barrier reared up, blocking the inlets to the lagoon that surrounds the city.
As an opening—or closing?—ceremony, this one was pretty bizarre. Elisabetta Spitz, the special commissioner put in charge of the project after last year’s lethal flooding, noted its “troubled and controversial history”. The mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, said MOSE was “not an example to be copied”. Indeed not: delays have put MOSE nine years behind schedule and three times over its original budget.
The other doubt is whether Italy can afford the MOSE’s astronomic running costs, estimated at around €100m a year. Additional government borrowing to restart the economy after the covid-19 pandemic could easily push public debt above 160% of GDP, so money is tight. In fact, says Pietro Teatini, professor of hydrology at the university of Padua, many of the world’s cities are sinking because of the draining of aquifers below them. Venice too sank 10-15 centimetres in the post-war years because of industrial exploitation of the aquifer system underneath. But water is no longer being extracted in excessive quantities, and the city today is relatively stable.
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