Venice, high water: where did the Mose go?

The Moses, an acronym for Electromechanical Experimental Module, is the work conceived to save Venice from the high tide, never entered into operation, as demonstrated by the destructive storm of last night. A system of mobile dams, made up of 78 metal bulkheads, placed on the bottom of the three lagoon inlets (Lido, Malamocco is Chioggia), designed to lift up when needed and block water which, driven by the sirocco, arrives from the Adriatic Sea and floods the city. A work as enormous as the controversies that accompany it. Last October, according to ANSA, the test phase of the sluice gates, started in July and which was about to end on a symbolic date, was interrupted on November 4th, which recalls theAqua granda of 1966.

On 31 October it was postponed to the complete lifting of the barrier laid at the port of Malamocco because, he explained on Consorzio Venezia Nuova – concessionaire of the Ministry of Infrastructure for the realization of the works, which is now a police station, given that several of its members have bargained for having received illicit funds -, during the partial lifting of the mobile dams, on 21 and 24 October last, of some vibrations in some sections of exhaust pipe lines.

The Consortium technicians have decided to stop the tests, pending detailed checks and interventions to solve the problem. This was the last step of the mobile gates test phase, which began last April 18 with lifting Mouth of the Lido, the one further north, then continued on July 22 with that of Chioggia, to the south. The works, in particular for Malamocco (the deepest port mouth of the lagoon, 14 meters, which allows the entry and transit of commercial ships towards the docks of Porto Marghera along the Canale dei Petroli), are not finished however: the in fact, until the end of 2020, an installed structure will be subject to further consolidation and restoration works, since it was damaged by a storm in 2015.

The construction of the Mose

The construction of the Mose began in 2003. Since then the closure of the works has slipped from year to year, now we talk about 2021/2022. Just as the costs have increased: it had to cost less than two billion euros, we have reached 5 billion and 493 million. A squandering of money that in 2014 led to an investigation with 35 suspects and ended the company in receivership. To this were added the critical voices on the functionality of the work, from No Mose Committee to some surveys, commissioned by the Ministry of Infrastructure: the salt is corroding the metal of the hinges, perpetually immersed in the sea and the sediments block the bulkheads. All problems that increase maintenance costs.

Carlo Nordio, the magistrate who coordinated the Mose investigations, in this two-year-old article explained how corruption has stopped the work and why to fight it "there is no need for harsher penalties but a lighter bureaucracy".

(Video by Askanews)