What is the status of MOSE in Venice?

With the extraordinary flooding of Wednesday in Venice, where the high water reached 187 centimeters touching the historical maximum recorded during the 1966 flood, we have returned to talk about the MOSE, the imposing structure now under construction for over fifteen years that should repair the city from the high tide. According to its designers, MOSE, which stands for Electromechanical Experimental Body, is almost finished: but even the last five years of its history have been characterized by great delays and unexpected events that have increased skepticism about a work that is already controversial.

Currently the work is carried out at 94 percent, according to its builders, and the date announced for its entry into service is the end of 2021. Still on Wednesday, after the high water, the mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro reiterated the urgency of the commissioning of the plant.

The latest delays are very recent. Only at the end of October, in fact, had been postponed to a date to be defined a test that provided for the complete lifting of one of the barriers that make up the movable dam of the MOSE, that of the port mouth of Malamocco, one of the three passages that connect the lagoon of Venice by the sea, along with those of the Lido and Chioggia. The problem was that in a test vibrations were recorded that were considered dangerous, which caused the general test initially scheduled for November 4, the anniversary of the 1966 high water, to be blown up.

The last phase of the inspection of the sluice gates – as the 78 enormous barriers that make up the MOSE are called – of the other port mouths had been carried out between April and July of this year. Roberto Boraso, Councilor for Mobility and Transport of Venice, said last July that the work was complete "at 94 percent", adding that "last October 29 (2018 ed) , when the exceptional high water of 156 centimeters was recorded, perhaps we could have already used it ".

The next phase, once the tests of the last gates have been completed, should be the completion of the final systems of the system, which according to theHandle is scheduled for 30 June 2020, followed by the last phase of experimental management. It is estimated that the total expenditure for the project will amount to 7 billion euros.

MOSE is one of the most well-known Italian infrastructure projects of the last twenty years, built starting in 2003: initially the works should have ended in 2014, but then the date was postponed several times for different obstacles. The best known came precisely in 2014, when a major investigation hypothesized a vast round of corruption on the works, for which the former president of the Veneto Region, Giancarlo Galan, was also arrested and then negotiated a sentence of 2 years and 10 months. The realization of the works is entrusted to the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, a union of local and national companies and cooperatives, which after the scandal was a police station by the State.

Concretely, the MOSE consists of a sort of huge mobile dam installed on the three port mouths – that is, three passages – that separate the Venice lagoon from the sea: that of the Lido, that of Malamocco and that of Chioggia. To block the high tides are 78 sluice gates, that is metal girders between 18 and 29 meters wide, attached to huge concrete blocks on the seabed. Normally, the sluice gates remain arranged on the bottom, but they rise when the high tide exceeds the threshold of 110 centimeters, protecting the lagoon. To allow the passage of ships, the MOSE provides for navigation basins, that is to say systems of locks that allow entry and exit from the lagoon.