"The Serenissima always cleaned the canals, they have now stopped for 50 years"

VENICE – La Serenissima knew the importance of the excavation of the channels of the Lagoon to maintain the balance of this delicate system, and moderate the effect of the tide. A constant job that the Doges have always carried out, and that in the last 50 years Venice has played only sporadically. A philosophy of conservation that has been lost over time. To tell it is the sociologist Gianfranco Bettin, president of the municipality of Marghera, historical exponent of Venetian environmentalism, former deputy mayor of the city.READ ALSO
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"The aim was to defend the mouths of the port, a duty – observes Bettin – even if it was born on Moses, to which I have always been against. The channels had to be cleaned at the same time to maintain the balance of the lagoon, all elements expressed in the Special Law for Venice. Instead – he underlines – he focused only on the Mose, going from an approach that was cultural to the more strictly political one: and whoever was on the bridge did not understand what had to be done ".

Before the Mose was launched, in the 90s, with the first council of Massimo Cacciari, the subsidiary company Insula was born. "With this and the funds of the Special Law – remembers Bettin – the canals have been progressively put to dry, therefore removing the water, they have been cleaned up and dug to the correct level. Above all, the banks and the foundations of the buildings were reinforced, in part the soil was raised where it could be ". «Then in 2003 the route to the Moses arrived – continues the story Bettin – is all the money ended up there, justifying the choice with the speed of the work on the port mouths that would have solved everything. We know how it ended. "

On the industrial channels, instead, we have always continued to dig where the dredging was needed, but with a different system, bringing the sludge to disposal because it was harmful. "But this – he explains – is an independent path from the rest". "During the work of the Moses some canal was also dug in the historic city – confirms Bettin – but no longer dry, proceeding with dredging, which is certainly not the best solution". A type of work that is resumed with the current council led by Luigi Brugnaro, however, always in damp, that is with dredging, which will bring at the end of the year 13,500 cubic meters of mud and 21 cleaned channels, with an investment of 3.5 million. Among the initiatives, more symbolic than anything else, of these months, there is the intervention of the gondolier-divers who, free of charge, in collaboration with the Municipality, immerse themselves in the Grand Canal to recover tires, boat engines, old water heaters, and other garbage ended who knows how in the main waterway of Venice.