Italy starts 'Moses' project to save Venice

Yahoo! News (AP ^ | 5/15/2003 | n/a

[Pyro7480]

Italy Kicks Off Venice Flooding Project

VENICE, Italy - Premier Silvio Berlusconi inaugurated an ambitious $4 billion project to ease the flooding that regularly deluges this celebrated canal city.

The "Moses" project — named after the Biblical figure who parted the Red Sea — is expected to take about eight years. Hinged barriers will be built on the seabed just off Venice and will be raised when high tides threaten the city.

"Venice is magnificent, the pride of all Italy," Berlusconi said on Wednesday as officials prepared to lay the first stone of the project. "Attention to saving this patrimony, this marvel, is at the top of the government's concerns."

High water regularly floods into famed St. Mark's Square and other parts of Venice, and Venetians and tourists are then forced to walk on raised walkways to keep their feet try.

Making things worse, the city itself is sinking, the level of the Adriatic is rising and high tides are becoming more frequent.

The project was devised after years of study. Some environmental groups criticize it, saying the barriers will turn the lagoon into a stagnant pond.

Activists in small boats drove into the lagoon Wednesday to protest the project but were blocked by police from getting close to the ceremony.

[Pyro7480]

Where's Charleton Heston when you need him? ;-)

[jrawk]

Very interesting.

I have been following this through NOVA on PBS and Popular Science/Mechanics for I think a decade now. Talk about an uber-studied project.

Very interested to see if actually does get built.

-- lates
-- jrawk

[cyborg]

I am going to Venice next week. I saw that Nova special too.

[RightWhale]

They ought to move the entire city inland, or put it up on pilings. Maybe put a dome over it and let it sink and you could view it from glass-bottom boats. Or just forget about it.

[Stefan Stackhouse]

It is not so much that the sea level is rising, but that Venice is sinking, having being built on a swamp. It cannot be "saved", only its demise can be delayed for a few years, at the expense of a lot of euros.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

New Orleans has a similar set up to keep
storm surge out of lake.

[j.havenfarm]

Well, if you were being harried by Huns on horseback, you might choose marshy islands to live on, too! It can't help that much of the wooden pilings are about 1,000 years old.