The protest against the waves, in Venice
Saturday morning is scheduled in Venice a manifestation against the waves, a significant problem for buildings and navigation, which only a city like Venice can have, due to the way it was built inside the lagoon. Hundreds of people are expected to participate, expressing their reasons by shouting slogans and displaying banners from their boats, rigorously rowed, in the San Marco basin.
The event was organized by the group called “Insieme” which 31 associates between associations and sports clubs of rowing and sailing of the Venetian lagoon. It is not the first time that rowers and rowers protest against the waves, or more properly against the wave: for Venice it is a historical problem, debated for decades, and to neglect any administration is to be able to limit the consequences of the daily passage of thousands of boats motor in the lagoon.
Fifty years ago there were 12,500 motor boats, now it is even difficult to say precisely how many: according to the latest they would be between 80 and 100 thousand.
Giannandrea Mencini, Venetian journalist and writer who reconstructed the history of the protests against the wave motion in Venice, found that the first trace of dissent dates back to the nineteenth century, to be precise 1882, when a woman from Cannaregio, Santa Siega, presented a reminder to the prefect “for the damage that the foundations of the said building are affected by the waves that fight the steamboats that make the service from Venice to Mestre ».
139 years later, the claims are the same. The associations protest mainly for two reasons: because the waves created by motor boats make it very difficult for smaller boats to navigate, which risk capsizing; and because the same waves, when they crash against the buildings and the banks, cause damage to the foundations and in general to the delicate building structure of the city.
Lucio Conz, president of the Giudecca Rowing Association, explains that the waves are very dangerous.
The damage caused to buildings by a single wave is negligible, but becomes visible and worrying when the situation of stability is now serious and often irreparable. “The waves don’t knock houses down in one fell swoop, of course,” says Conz. «First they remove grains of mortar, then the bricks fall and finally the stones. To remedy these damages they serve as construction sites for years and in Venice it is not uncommon to see palisades supporting the unsafe parts of some buildings ».
Each wave also causes risks and fatigue to those who sail in the lagoon on rowing or sailing boats.
The more the years pass, the more the motor boats and the consequent dangers for other boats, discouraging many people from protecting a tradition that is not only sporting. “In certain areas of the lagoon it is not really possible to row because of the waves, for example in Sant’Elena,” says Conz. «Waves can even reach 1.50 meters: for smaller boats it is a wall. It’s like riding a bicycle on the motorway, but here we are in a lagoon, not a motorway ».
The associations maintain that the controls for compliance with speed limits are “practically non-existent” and that with the increase of tourists, boats sail in the lagoon which, due to the way they were built and the weight they carry, cause waves, while respecting the limits of speed. The same goes for the vaporetti that every day carry thousands of people from one part of Venice to another.
Furthermore, in the last year, the restructuring of many buildings thanks to the incentives guaranteed by the so-called “superbonus 110%” has caused an increase in the traffic of heavy boats that supply the yards.
With their protest, the sports associations of rowing and sailing ask the government to insert some specific rules in the amendments to the proposed law for the protection of Venice and its lagoon as mentioned above it started the discussion in Parliament.
First of all for the height to define a precise limit of the waves, “so as not to damage the shores, the seabed”. They also urge the creation of a “Public Ship Register”, with the characteristics of the existing one for cars, and GPS controls on all motor boats, “a single system capable of allowing continuous surveillance of all the waters of the lagoon and that takes into account the specific characteristics of the individual boat and the wave effect produced “.
The latest request is the establishment of “No wake up zone”, An area of the city where the boats cannot leave the characteristic white trail, and therefore no waves.
Another non-negligible problem with motor boats is pollution. If polluting categories have been identified for cars for the approval of vehicles that are used to provide circulation when the air quality is low – Euro zero, Euro 1 and so on -, there are no restrictions for boats, if no amount of sulfur contained in the fuel. In Venice, for example, the stop to polluting vehicles that the Veneto Region, like others in Northern Italy, is not worth every year imposes from October to April. In fact, boats are “boats” and not vehicles.
To make people understand the damage that pollution can create a city like Venice, the first can be mentioned special law for the safeguarding of Venice, approved in 1973, which requires that thermal and industrial plants be powered only with gaseous fuels, such as methane, or with electricity. The standard was introduced to protect the marble of the buildings which, due to the particulate matter, turn into plaster.
The particulate matter transforms the calcium carbonate, of which the buildings are mainly constructed (marble, limestone rocks, travertine), into calcium sulphate, which, being more soluble and friable, undergoes the continuous erosion of the rain. The same law required the government to issue by 1975 new regulations for specific characteristics of boat engines and essential requirements to limit polluting emissions. Since then, despite the protests, no more boats have been discussed in the presence of so many (which in the meantime have increased).
Since the mid-nineties environmental associations, neighborhood committees and the “Pax in Aqua” association, created specifically to ask for a solution against motion onoso, have made many appeals to municipal administrations asking the mayors who have succeeded one another to intervene with regulations more restrictive to limit the impact of traffic in the lagoon.
In 2007 was installed the ARGOS system (Automatic remote observation system of the Grand Canal), a network of cameras and sensors to check the speed of boats in real time and to sanction those who did not respect the speed limits. ARGOS was turned on and off several times because it did not respect the privacy legislation and the municipal regulation on video surveillance. Since 2017, several justices of the peace canceled 10 of injunction orders issued by the municipal administration because the instrument had not been tested. In 2020 the Cassation will also to define illegitimate.
In recent years in Venice there has been a lot of discussion about how to control motor boats, without finding a valid solution.
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