Venice’s floodgates failure sharpens power struggle with Rome

ROME — The inhabitants of Venice last week heard a sound they were hoping to forget: the wail of the siren signaling a flood tide, or acqua alta. 

Following apocalyptic floods in 2019, the worst for more than 50 years, the city’s decades-in-the-making, €5.5 billion flood barrier system finally went into action in October. 

For residents of a city besieged by water, the floodgates seemed the answer to their prayers. But as the tide rose on December 8, leaving shop and restaurant owners knee-deep in briny water, their hopes faded.

Laura Onofri, an economics professor who has lived in Venice for 18 years, said the December floods triggered flashbacks to last year’s disaster. “I felt sick with anxiety. I thought I had got over the trauma but it brought back the anger and the sense of helplessness.”

But the most recent acqua alta hasn’t just reignited anxieties about Venice’s future. It’s also sparked a political blame game, thrown a spotlight on the competing economic interests involved and upped the ante in a power struggle between the central government and local authorities.

The Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico (MOSE) — named for the Biblical Moses, who held back the Red Sea — is an underwater dam system that inflates and rises during high tides, blocking the Adriatic from entering the lagoon.

Approved by the government in 2003, the project is set to be four times over budget and 11 years late when it is finally completed next year.

Complex and costly to operate, the MOSE seemed destined to become an emblematic Italian infrastructure white elephant. Its underwater design, chosen for aesthetic reasons, makes it slow and unwieldy. Inspections already show extensive corrosion; the annual maintenance cost has been estimated at €100 million. 

When the MOSE unexpectedly rose to the test in October, Venetians took off their waders and cheered. The coronavirus has devastated a city that lives on tourism; the floodgates “brought us hope,” said Onofri, creating “a kind of collective euphoria.”  

“Today Venice wakes up and no longer has to be afraid,” said Federico D’Incà, the government minister for parliamentary relations, who is from Veneto, at the time.

But then, in early December, the waters crept over the canal banks into the Piazza San Marco and beyond after the MOSE system did not activate.

The government-appointed special commissioner for the MOSE, Elisabetta Spitz, blamed the failure on the construction group that built and currently operates the system, which underestimated the level of the tide. A spokesman for the group acknowledged that its tide forecast was wrong, telling POLITICO: “There are variables in the weather, it is not always predictable.” 

The gates are still in an experimental phase ahead of next year’s expected completion, and the operator says it currently needs 48 hours to warn ships, transport crew to the site and run tests. By the time it was clear the city would flood, it was too late. 

Critics say the current system is too slow and blamed the flood on confusion in the chain of command.

The government agency that was due to take control of the MOSE upon completion was dissolved in 2014 following a major corruption scandal, which involved bribes to politicians for voicing favourable opinions of the project. 

A new body that will maintain and manage the MOSE was created by a government decree in August, but has yet to take form — and so a political battle over who gets to be in charge of the system has ensued. 

Right-wing opposition parties want to wrest control of the MOSE from the government in Rome and give it to the local municipality, which they control. There is strong support for regional autonomy in Veneto, which is ruled by the far-right League, originally a northern separatist movement. 

Local players could react faster to weather changes and better understand the competing interests at stake, Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro told Italian TV last week. “Whenever the state manages anything in Venice it is slow and done badly … Weather and wind are always unpredictable … We need an organization that is faster and more flexible to respond to changes.”

According to Luca De Carlo, a senator and Veneto coordinator of the hard-right Brothers of Italy party, Venetians would not have made the same mistake. 

“Any average Venetian would have understood from the winds and the tides [what was happening] and would have prepared and acted immediately,” he said, calling the centralization of power “arrogant.” He added: “Venice must have the power to defend itself from the invasion of water.”

Yet with the national government picking up the tab, it expects to be calling the shots. And Rome has legal backing: A 1967 law states that safeguarding Venice is of pre-eminent national interest.  

“The state has spent €6 billion on the MOSE and will pay for its maintenance, so it is right that the state manage it. If the municipality wants to manage it, let them pay,” Nicola Pellicani, a Venetian MP for the ruling Democratic Party, said.

He admitted there were still problems to resolve, but said the regional authorities’ demands weren’t helping. “There are too many personalities in the arena. The mayor, the commissioner, everyone wants to have their say.”

The most recent flood has demonstrated the need for the new public body, he argued — in order “to have clarity, and a clear line of command.”

Whoever manages the MOSE will have difficult and highly politicized decisions to make. Each deployment costs an estimated €300,000. Originally, the dykes were devised to rise when high water hits 110 centimeters, but with rising sea levels and erosion, lagoon floods higher than that level have doubled since the 1960s. Last week’s acqua alta hit 138 centimeters.

Closing the gates also blocks shipping, cruise and fishing vessels from entering and leaving the lagoon, affecting the work of the port, which employs 21,000 people and accounts for a quarter of the municipality’s economy. 

Amid the crossfire, ordinary Venetians feel their concerns are going unheeded. 

Currently, the MOSE is only launched for tides over 130 centimeters, a level that leaves much of the city, including St Mark’s Basilica, underwater. 

Jane da Mosto, director of the NGO We Are Here Venice, says that a public consultation to decide when and how the MOSE should be used is the only fair way to ensure the voices of those most affected are heard. 

“Certain lobbies have been able to accommodate their interests,” she said. “The only interests that aren’t represented in any of the represented institutions so far are the Venetians — the museums and churches and their homes, shops, hotels, and businesses.”

The battle for the control of the MOSE is also a battle for Venice’s soul: The city is losing inhabitants at a rate of 1,000 a year, and to stem the emigration it’s essential that jobs outside of tourism survive.

That presents a dilemma for those in charge of the barriers: If the historic city is saved at the expense of the port, the lagoon risks becoming a perpetual Disneyland. But if the port is allowed to take priority — and the gates are rarely activated — the rising waters could cause the few remaining Venetians to abandon ship. 

Most Venetians, however, agree on one thing: The floodgates are an imperfect solution, at best a stopgap for a few decades. But for now, it seems to be the only solution on offer.