Saving Venice From Sinking

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31936, 13 March 1969, Page 9

Saving Venice From Sinking

fN-Z.P. A. -Reuter—C opy right) VENICE (Italy). Italian and foreign scientists are racing against time to save the beautiful city of Venice from sinking into the waters that it once ruled. It is estimated that at the rate Venice is sinking, two thirds of the city and the mable walls praised by poets over the centuries will disappear under the waters by 1990. That Venice is sinking, noone doubts. But the questions of how and why remain to be settled. While the big debate rages, the “acqua alta”—the high tide that submerges the historic city centre—comes more often and the hood alarms wail more plaintively. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has stepped in and concluded an agreement with the Italian National Research Council for an urgent programme to save the city. The agreement, concluded by the U.N.E.S.C.O. head, Mr Rene Maheu, himself, calls for immediate air and geological surveys of Venice and its lagoon, and the formation of a mixed team of U.N.E.S.C.O. and Italian scientists. U.N.E.S.C.O. is expected to inject new energy and money into the flagging campaign to save Venice. Various Italian experts, after studying the problem for years, have produced mountains of research data and conflicting findings. Statistics show that since 1908, Venice has sunk by 13.6 centimetes (5.3 inches). The sinking has been slow and gradual—and largely ignored in previous years by the Venetians, who looked on floods more as an inconvenience than as an enemey. But after a major flood disaster that submerged the whole of Venice in November, 1966, Italians looked up and read the writing on the wall —Venice was doomed to die a slow death. A 60-member Government committee was hastily set up, given 860 million lire (about 51.225,000) and told to prepare a report for Parliament on what causes Venice to sink and how to prevent it. It ordered a scale model of the Venice lagoon made. But more than two years after the 1966 floods, the model has yet to be completed. A team of Dutch experts was also called in. The found the problem of Venice different from that of the Netherlands and have not yet compiled a final report, pending further surveys. Breaches in Venice’s old svstem of dykes—the “muraz-

tzi”—based on the outer Islands stretching from Chioggia to Jeselo—have been [ repaired but the high tide . surges in even more fre'iquently. Various reasons have been i advanced as to why Venice l is sinking—like movements of the earth's crust underground erosion, and the melti ing of polar ice which raises i the level of the sea. ■ Other experts blame the

sinking on Venice's industrial expansion and land reclamation projects which, they say, have disturbed the natural flow of the waters. They claim that floodings i become more frequent with : the establishment in 1927 of i the first “industrial area” of • Marghera, obtained by filling ■ in the shallows at the northi ern end of the lagoon and i reducing its capacity to ab- : I sorb the incoming tide. The

reclaimed area was enlarged in 1957.

They also criticise the recent excavation of a deepwater canal for tankers through the lagoon from the mouth of Malamocco to the port of Marghera. Gondoliers, who have been plying the city’s canals for 600 years, blame the sinking of Venice on the wash churned up by the increasing number of motor boats.