Venice tide barriers pass another test, but skeptics remain
... Central to the plan to protect the city, some or all of the 78 barriers will one day be raised when the sea rises more than 110 centimeters (43 inches), to prevent damaging high tides from pushing into the lagoon city, a world heritage site built picturesquely — but somewhat precariously — upon more than 120 islands. Concerns that high tides are becoming more frequent because of climate change have increased the urgency.
While the concept is simple, its realization has been anything but.
The system of movable underwater barriers, dubbed Moses, has been beset by corruption, cost overruns and delays. Projected at 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) and meant to be completed by 2011, the project has so far cost 5.5 billion euros and is running a decade behind schedule.
In the wake of last month’s flooding of Venice, the worst in 53 years, the consortium that oversees construction of Moses is eager to demonstrate that the project — after years of bad news — is on track and will be fully operational by the end of 2021.
Venetians say they cannot afford to be wrong. Skeptics and critics say they may be.
... It took six years to test each of the four movable sea walls covering the three openings to the lagoon, partly because work was slowed by a 2014 corruption scandal that implicated the three main contractors and sent 35 people to jail. ...
The fact that the barriers have not yet been physically tested in rough seas is a concern to critics.
Paolo Vielmo, an offshore marine engineer who has long criticized the project, said that tests carried out in a laboratory in the Netherlands in the 1990s indicated that the barriers, under certain conditions, would oscillate out of control — possibly even breaking apart. ...
...It’s not just the still-uncalculated damage to landmarks like St. Mark’s Basilica, where corrosive salt water creeps through porous brick and tile. It’s also the boxes of ruined belongings and piles of soaked mattresses discarded in alleyways and loaded onto motorboats and trash barges for disposal. The relentlessness of the Venetian fall and winter tides make one-third of ground floors uninhabitable in the historic canal city.
“I am very old, I cannot say that I want to die, but I certainly do not want to be witness to the fact that it does not work,” 84-year-old resident Paola Scarpa said of the Moses barriers, as she walked to check on a family property in the Canareggio neighborhood on a recent December morning. “It would be a pain too great.”
https://apnews.com/3b29dc70f308d93b633e2dc38c7acead
Neue Antwort erstellen
| 35.160 Beiträge
Besucher
Forum Statistiken
