The same thing happened to a man on the Riva dei Sette Martiri, the broad embankment near Saint Mark’s Square. Many tracts of flanking streets, especially in correspondence to the landing steps, have visibly caved in, because the ground under the pavement has become hollow. This damage to the underwater zone is described in illustrations 4, 5 and 6. It is repeatedly denounced by the local press.

This is just the start. Once created by passing motorboats, the cracks inexorably creep upwards. The outside walls of the buildings are opening up. Some walls have already collapsed, thus launching a sinister alarm. In figure 7 we see an analysis of the state of a building fronting a canal.

For more than a dozen years the local press has loudly denounced this situation. The national government is spending huge amounts for the so-called maintenance of the canals, which in reality is mostly the partial repair of the damages created by the backwash. The Special Law for the Safeguard of Venice pays the bills, while nobody seems to worry about the causes of the damage.

And few people remember that a city restored is not the original city any more. Materials and building techniques are necessarily different from the original ones; the old stones are replaced with other stones; a recent technique, widely applied, calls for grout to be injected through a thousand tiny tubes in an attempt at consolidation. Little by little a copy of the underwater city is being built (see figure 8).

Out in the lagoon the damages are even worse (figs. 9, 10, 11).

The typical grassy islands (locally called "barene", bah-reh-neh) are mercilessly eroded. During the last few years their total surface shrank form 70 to 40 square kilometres - by 2050, it is expected that they will have totally disappeared. A further problem is that the lagoon bottom gets continually stirred; this causes the release of sediment that is carried away by the tide and ends up in the open sea. As a consequence, weeds, herbs and fish disappear, the bottom gets levelled and the lagoon is transformed in a muddy extension of the sea, it becomes more and more uniform and deep, and more and more overrun by large, speeding boats.

Finally, the aesthetic part. Ever since the motors appeared, little or no effort was made to restrain the drivers. As a consequence, the city is not the same as it used to be. It has lost a large part of its poetry.

The stretch of water in front of Saint Mark’s Square is beaten, slapped and scoured by perennial waves. The lagoon flats, once motionless like magic mirrors, have become a hostile environment. Chunks of muddy, foamy waves incessantly pop up on every side. In order to find a moment of peace one’s gaze must be lifted towards the clouds or the sky. Only at four or five in the morning can one have an idea of the spirit of this ancient city, the way it used to be – and perhaps could be again. But with the new day more barbarians arrive to resume the absurd, incredible process of destruction.

The government proclaims a State of Emergency

The fact that Venice is facing an emergency is not just an impression of ours. It is under everybody’s eyes, and the national government has finally acknowledged it. In September, 2001, a decree by the Home Secretary announced a STATE OF EMERGENCY FOR VENICE AND ITS LAGOON DUE TO TRAFFIC-INDUCED BACKWASH.

The decree didn’t attract much attention in the national media, but it was very welcome in Venice, where public intervention had been invoked for years.

The announcement was accompanied by an exceptional step: the appointment of a Special Commissioner for Water Traffic. This was going to be an all-encompassing authority, temporarily replacing the five or six different offices supposedly responsible and which had been busy pointing their fingers at each other. And the Commissioner was endowed with exceptional powers.

Italia Nostra could start to hope again. For almost ten years we had worked with other associations (mostly the Venetian Pax in Aqua, whose main goal is “contrasting the increase of wave damage in Venice and in its lagoon”, but also the WWF and other associations), in order to ask for new and better rules for water traffic in the lagoon.

A little progress had been obtained before the appointment of the Commissioner, and this included:

• A clear definition of the speed limits theoretically imposed on the different canals (nobody remembered them any more, not even the authority which had issued them);
• The installation of signs with those limits at least in the most crowded canals;
• A public declaration of interest for at least a few of the many problems to be faced.

With the appointment of a Commissioner we were entitled to expect some serious, efficient steps to be finally undertaken.

But the government did not appoint, as was largely asked, a neutral outside authority, which could act super partes. It appointed the very same mayor of Venice, Mr. Paolo Costa, who was one of the parties responsible for the situation and, most importantly, subject to the electoral pressures of the economic groups which had to be regulated.

The Commissioner remained in charge for four years and, incredibly, did not bring any improvement on the situation except for a very partial success in the Grand Canal. The reasons for this failure, and for the failures of many other “Special Commissioners” in Italy, were vividly exposed by the well known journalist Milena Gabanelli in an issue of her TV program “Report” which included some surprising and worrisome admissions by the Mayor-Commissioner Paolo Costa.

After July, 2005, the power returned in the hands of the six authorities which had previously detained it, i. e.: City Hall, Water Authority, Harbour Authority, Financial Police, Carabinieri, Venice District Police. It must be pointed out that in this large number there is missing the one authority which perhaps should be more interested of all, i.e. the Monument Conservation Department (Soprintendenza ai Monumenti), the Director of which was obliged to admit to Italia Nostra that he has no means to intervene against this destruction of Venice’s monuments.

The collapse continues and the destruction is increasing. The Mayor-Commissioner has spent a large part of his generous funds (fifteen million Euros according to our sources) for studies, conferences and consultants.

But the ideas have remained on paper. In the lagoon and throughout the city’s inner canals, nothing has changed at all. Motor boats are now required to carry licence plates **, but there is no surveillance: in fact, the few controls are now focussed on bureaucratic details such as the positioning of the licence plate rather than on the boats’ speed, something less comfortable for the officers to check, and more controversial.

Excess waves: causes and remedies

To find the remedies, we need to look at the use of motor boats in Venice. There are three basic uses:

1. Transportation of persons, principally tourists, on board of taxis, ferries and “vaporetti”;
2. Transportation of merchandise on board of “mototopi” the typical, flat-bottomed lagoon workboats;;
3. Recreation.

1. Transportation of persons

The number of licenced water taxis in Venice is 281. They have been able to condition the local administrations to the point of being allowed to freely destroy island banks and canals. No attempt has ever been made to limit the damages created by water taxis. Some steps, however, would be very obvious and very efficient. Among such steps would be:

• performing regular and frequent speed controls;
• introducing wave-reducing hulls and less powerful motors;
• reducing the size of the cabins (Venice’s taxis are the only ones in the world authorized to carry up to twenty-four passengers each);
• introducing “mini-taxis” for the fragile inner canals;
• linking prices to time counters rather than to the expensive standards of “renting a water craft with pilot”.

There is no place in the lagoon where the allowed speed is higher than 20 kilometers per hour (about 12 miles). But the routine speed of taxis driving to the airport is between forty and sixty. The lagoon police wrote:

“In particular in the canal leading to the airport the highest peaks of speed were reached by taxis, with measurements of up to 59 kilometers per hour, while in the inner city the highest measured speed was 46 k/h for a taxi and 70 k/ for a sports boat.”

Let us not forget that the police data are very conservative because the pilots can identify police crafts from very afar and have the time to slow down. Water taxis are also known for warning each other in code through VHF transmitters.

The large tourist launches are bus-sized motor boats specialized in the transportation of tourists from the bus parking lots (in the man-made island called Tronchetto, on the city end of the bridge from the mainland) to Saint Mark’s Square.

Their number has grown in the last twenty years from a half dozen to 154 (counted on the base or their regular landings at St. Mark’s).

Those are 154 large motor boats which every day run back and forth – in some cases dozens of times per day – without a precise schedule but depending on the demand. It is in their interest to cover the distance in a time as short as possible.

Their hulls are designed for the open sea, not for the lagoon and their licences are granted according to criteria used for the open sea. No special attention is given to wave-producing factors: their large, heavy sterns or immensely powerful motors.

They have made it impossible – or at least extremely dangerous – for small local boats to cross the waters where they navigate. In particular, the waters surrounding the St. Mark’s area have become the merciless home of high waves coming and going in all directions.

And this has damaged Venice: the two small towers near the Palladio church in the island of St. George (they were built during the Austrian domination in the early 19.th century) were slowly gliding into the water because of the backwash and had to be rescued with heavy maintenance work.

There’s another threat: during the last ten years the traffic of the cruising ships has increased exponentially. Many of these ships can carry two to three thousand passengers a week. They are permitted to pass in front of St. Mark’s square and through the Canale della Giudecca, causing the displacement of immense quantities of water and enormous underwater pressure on the banks and building foundations, plus environmental and acoustic pollution and a serious danger of accidents which could damage the artistic patrimony.

The largest ships, very close three hundred meters in length (289 to 294), must make a u-turn in a space by the diameter of 305 meters. From the city embankments, Venetians and tourists alike remain open-mouthed as they watch the surrealistic scene of those ships, many times as tall as the highest buildings, moving through the scene really like huge elephants in a delicate china shop. The cruising tourists get off the ships in the passenger harbour, from which they dart to the downtown shopping areas on board of hundreds of water taxis. The inner canals absorb the backwash and the town’s economy prospers – or is supposed to prosper.

In the face of these threats, the gondolas traditionally moored in front of St. Mark’s Square had to be protected with temporary – and highly inelegant – breakwaters. Thus one of the most enchanting landscapes of the entire city lost a large part of its beauty.

The local means of public transportation are the well-known “vaporetti”, bus-size boats whose hulls are relatively well designed. At small speeds they produce little or no surface backwash (under the water it cannot be avoided). But their public schedules have been wilfully decided without consideration of the standing time at the stops, for passengers to get in and out. Those times are very long, especially during high tourist season. As a consequence the drivers, in order to keep on schedule, are “obliged“ to speed as fast as possible between stops. The hulls were not designed for high speeds, so the backwash increases enormously. The local police accept this fact (the “close an eye“) and so the damages increase.

2. Transportation of Merchandise

In the absence of specific regulations for lagoon waters, the structure of the cargo crafts underwent progressive adaptations without any respect for the natural or artistic environment. Today these boats (still called with the ancient name of “mototopi”) are similar to powerful battleships, merrily speeding through outer and inner canals, negotiating curves with powerful rear-gear action, blowing out clouds of polluting smoke, banging against bridges and against the corners of the buildings.

The Mayor-Commissioner spent part of the funds from the national government to have a local boatyard build a prototype of a merchandise boat appropriate for Venice. This was done; the prototype was built and shown to the press. But it was never imposed nor even recommended, presumably because of opposition by the operators. This is one more example in the vast “Museum of Inefficiency” of the Venice Administration.

Each cargo boat has its own customers and every day each goes back and forth through the Venice canals. By grouping deliveries by canal rather then by clint, there would be an economy of 50 to 80 per cent of the miles run. In order to do this Venice would need a Warehouse Storage Centre for the merchandise to be redistributed in the moment of its passage from truck or train to boat. This need is so obvious that it has been a top theoretical priority for over twenty years. The Commissione spent more funds to order a feasibility study from a German firm by the name of Transcare. He then proceeded, with enormous expenditure, to acquire a building for the future Centre. Works for the construction have now begun and it was promised that they will finish in 2009 (see clips from Il Gazzettino and La Nuova Venezia ), at a total cost of 30 million euros, all with public funds.

Something more is needed, however: the operators have to accept the new approach. So far, the first attempts at agreement have failed. Actually, an exception has already been granted to a group of operators based in the lagoon bank at San Giuliano (at the mainland end of the lagoon bridge). They were promised separate headquarters in an artificial island.

In the meantime the volume of the merchandise to be transported is steadily increasing, much of it in order to supply the tourist business, since visitors have grown from 8 to 19 million in a few years. Traffic jams of “mototopi” in the city canals are a constant feature. The windows of homes tremble because of the vibrations induced by their propellers. Window sills acquire the grey-black colour of combustion gases. The marbles of the monuments crumble apart. The boat drivers fight vocally for priority in passage and standing. The tourists take pictures, half surprised and half amused.

3. Recreational boats.

The damages created by resident boat-goers happen especially out in the lagoon, where the young (but also quite a few not so young) race across the water for the fun of speeding.

But even worse damages are created by the inhabitants of the mainland who keep huge speed boats in the many marinas which have been allowed to operate inside the lagoon. In the summer, and particularly during week ends, they cross the lagoon at high speed to reach the open sea. They are the main cause of the erosion of islands and canal banks. Their presence is making it impossible for the Venetians to keep the old tradition of Sunday outings in the Lagoon, because their small family boats cannot face the waves created by those giants. In particular, traditional wooden boats, built to be rowed or sailed, capsize easily when caught in the weekend traffic. After the inefficient Commissioner years, the recreational use of the lagoon is still in need of basic regulation. (The image alongside this text is taken from the site of a Venice/s sailing association: http://www.velaalterzo.it/avt.asp).

What Needs To Be Done

The most important and urgent steps to be taken are as follows:

• A system of constant and efficient controls, so as to enforce at least the existing regulations. This can be done immediately and at little cost. In particular, if the speed limits were respected the picture would dramatically improve.



• Exclusion of the actual taxi boats from the inner canals except for emergencies. Introduction of the so-called mini-taxis (i.e., carrying four-five passengers), equipped with non-polluting motors.



• Introduction of stringent regulations for the Group Transportation Launches, which at this moment carry the tourists directly to St. Mark’s Square, and introduction of an optional public service for the transportation of visitors to and from the parking lots.



• Rapid construction of the Ware Storage Center, approval of operating regulations and enforcement of obligation for all involved firms to comply.



• Exclusion of the giant cruising ships form the lagoon tract between Lido and St. Mark’s and institution of a public service to carry the cruising ship passengers from the mooring place to the city’s center.

All those are common sense steps, which would not in the least damage the town’s economy (actually they would make its growth acceptable) and would help Venice to survive. Why they are not expressed, approved and enforced remains hard to understand. One can only think that the very minute interests of the individuals and firms operating in the areas of transportation (closely tied, of course, to the tourism business) were and still are capable of conditioning the city administrations of the last decades.

What’s in Storage

As in the case of mass tourism, a correct management of lagoon traffic is strongly opposed by a myriad of small economic interests. Those are basically ill calculated, as in all cases of tragedy of the commons, where there is a perceived conflict between individual interests and the common good.

In reality, a wise policy would provide economic benefits for all; but a further complication is the sudden creation of enduring structures such as the tourist launches: these monopolize the transportation of tourist groups from the bus parking lots to downtown Venice. The launches are here to stay, because 1) they represent important investments and 2) they are a source of immense profits. In a context like Venice and Italy it is virtually impossible at this point to reorganize them.

The local political institutions have been incapable, or for electoral reasons unwilling, to regulate water traffic. Some faint signs of interest were exhibited only under the pressure of the associations of concerned citizens such as Italia Nostra, WWF and some rowing and sailing clubs. But it is reasonable to fear that nothing will seriously change unless the inhabitants are threatened in their direct and personal interests. This has started to happen: Venetians have begun to recognise the problems of air pollution, acoustic pollution and, more urgently, the weakening of the foundations and walls of the canal fronts.

Italia Nostra must therefore keep putting pressure on the administrations, relentlessly reminding them of the absurdity and short-sightedness of the past policies. But the strongest hope lies in a coordination of the spontaneous initiatives of Venice’s inhabitants, including the new residents and the owners of second homes.

This image is from the site http://www.venessia.com.