-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4430485,00.html
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Flooded, stinking and sinking: Venice calls in British experts to rescue city
Thames-style barrier and floating marshes are planned
Paul Brown in Venice
Monday June 10, 2002
The Guardian
A team of British experts has been called in to try to save Venice from increasing
inundation from flooding, and to prevent the ancient palaces from being battered by
winter storms.
A controversial plan to build a Thames barrier-type structure with 79 gates, each
weighing 300 tonnes, has been given the go-ahead. Once built, the barrier will be
raised when a high tide threatens to engulf the city.
But there are fears about how this might affect the Venice lagoon, particularly the
possibility that it could further restrict the flushing of the city's waterways by the
tide,
making the famous stinking canals more stagnant.
To avoid making a bad situation worse, the British scientists have been brought in to
map tidal flows, marine plants and sediment deposits, and then suggest ways to
prevent the city becoming the first high-profile victim of global warming anda rise in
sea levels.
The team, led by Professor David Paterson of St Andrews University, will begin the
£250,000 three-year project in August. As well as using remote sensing techniques
and satellite images, the water level and living creatures in the lagoon will be
constantly measured by a network of scientific instruments.
"Our first job is to find out what is going on at the moment and how the lagoon
operates, before the gates are put in place," Prof Paterson said. "If we have that data
we can then measure afterwards to see if the situation is getting better or worse, and
suggest ways of solving the problem."
Yesterday the tide was up, and the ice cream sellers in St Mark's Square were selling
more wellington boots than ices. The high tides of the past few days are an
increasing pattern. Everyone has known for centuries that Venice is sinking, but
floods are becoming a regular nuisance.
Today a floating symposium on the problems of the Adriatic sea, with 250 scientists,
politicians and church officials on board, reaches the city to discuss its problems.
Unless the water has receded, the participants - including the head of the Greek
Orthodox Church, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and Richard Chartres, the
Bishop of London - will have to wade to reach the service of thanksgiving in St
Mark's Cathedral.
Not everyone is convinced that the barriers are the best idea. Prof Paterson says
Venice's original sinking problems were caused when Italy's largest river, the Po,
was diverted from the city centuries ago. The idea was to prevent the sediment
carried down the river silting up the harbour and the grand canal, the original course
of the river.
"The problem with this is that it is the silt which built the sand and mud banks on
which the city stands. When the flow of silt to replenish these stopped, the city
gradually began to sink."
Rising sea levels have gradually eroded the salt marshes and mudbanks that stood
between the city and the Adriatic. Winter storms cause ever higher waves which are
battering the walls of the old palaces.
"There are plans to create artificial silt barriers to keep the waves at bay, but I am
working on a plan to have floating marshes anchored round the city, Prof Paterson
said. They will not stop the tide rising, but they will break up the waves, the main
cause of the structural damage. They could be very cheap and effective."
Last year St Mark's Square, the lowest and most famous part of the city, flooded
more than 90 times. In the whole of the 1920s, the city is recorded as having flooded
only 60 times. Partly because of the continual fear of floods as the warning sirens
become part of everyday life, the local people are moving out. The population of the
old city has halved to 70,000 in the last 50 years and the numbers continue to fall.
The city was originally built and still stands on wooden piles, or tree trunks, driven
by
their thousands into the mud. Paintings by Canaletto, document the waterline on
buildings, showing that the tides now lap 80cm (30 inches) higher than two centuries
ago. Marble steps leading down to canals at the beginning of the 20th century are
now submerged, except at low tide.
Apart from diverting the silt away from Venice, modern man has contrived in other
ways to destroy the gem created by the Venetian empire. Professor Erdal Ozhan, a
Turkish expert on the Mediterranean coast who has studied Venice, said that natural
gas extraction in the northern Adriatic had also caused problems. "The combination
of natural gas extraction and tapping into the ground water below the city for drinking
has caused a half-metre drop in the level of the city in the last 50 years," he said.
"Add to that a sea level rise and the situation is critical."
The worst flood in the city's history was in 1966 when a combination of the southern
sirocco, piling the water up in the northern Adriatic, and spring tides allowed the sea
to break through the city's defences and inundate Venice. Many pavements next to
canals have been built higher, and banks on the outer lagoon restored to prevent the
sea swamping them. Still, the rush of water through the three remaining gaps is often
too great.
Prof Ozhan said that the combination of a high tide and a sirocco could push the
water a metre higher in Venice. A metre tide covers 4% of the city, but because
Venice is almost flat, a rise of only 10cm more will flood 40%.
The flood barrier is unlikely to be finished before 2007. The cost is estimated at
£2bn, but is expected to rise, as most mega-projects tend to do.
With global warming expected to add at least another half metre to the sea level this
century, the city's problems are bound to get worse.
Prof Paterson said: "We cannot stop Venice sinking eventually, but we can slow the
process down. We hope at least for now we can stop the city flooding and so enjoy it
a while longer."
Venice is well known for its smell. Its stinking canals in summer can be almost as
overwhelming as its beauty - and both are man-made.
Aboard the floating symposium which reaches Venice today to discuss its pollution
and environment problems, the senior theologian in the Greek Orthodox Church,
John of Pergamon, commented: "Why and how has humankind reached such a
deplorable situation, in which its most beautiful cultural achievements can exist side
by side with the worst and saddest environmental destruction?"
The Venice smell was explained by a British scientist, David Smith: while the towns
surrounding Venice, on the shores of the lagoon, had good sewage works, none
existed in the historic city. The effluent from the millions of tourists that visit
the city
goes straight into the canals and the shallow lagoon, sometimes causing a thick
soup of algae and the smell of rotting vegetation.
"Who would dig up Venice to lay sewage pipes?" he asked.
There are only three entrances to the lagoon and little tide, so the interchange of
water with the rest of the Adriatic is limited. The summer heat causes an explosion of
growth in the algae.
But this is not the only problem. Inadequate filters on the chimneys of the oil
refinery
and petrochemical complex at Porto Marghera mean that sulphur and nitrate-laden
fumes are deposited in the lagoon. Organic matter from the refinery and oil contained
in the waste water add to the problem.
The refinery was built in the 1950s and channels dug to allow oil tankers to dock.
"Whoever decided to put a major oil refinery at the edge of the Venice lagoon was a
criminal," Mr Smith said. "It was terribly irresponsible. We might not be able to close
it, but we could, with modern technology, stop the worst of the pollution."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
End<{{{
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