Is Venice Really Sinking?

Along Venice's Grand Canal.

Reports earlier this week of Venice suffering one of its worse floods in 22 years left me feeling concerned, frustrated and helpless. The usual photos of locals and tourists trudging across makeshift planks in their rubber hip boots through Piazza San Marco felt like Ground Hog Day to me. I've often traveled to the storied city on the Adriatic in the frigid dead of winter and have narrowly missed what is commonly known as acqua alta, or the high waters that result from ferocious winds and the churning of the surrounding murky lagoons. But since at least the early 1990s, I've kept a growing file of articles on Venice's efforts to contain the floodwaters.

Stephen Fay,  former business editor of London's Sunday Times, has - since the 1970s -- been chronicling the byzantine government bureaucracy, complex engineering plans, and pitfalls of preservation that have placed any solution at a standstill.

 So back to December 1, 2008: When I saw the same images of people - mainly in the lower quarter of San Marco -- battling water that rose to a record five feet, I simply threw my hands up. Plus, in the midst of a natural disaster, the vaporetti operators were on strike. A classic Italian phrase of jaded indifference comes to mind: "buona notte."

Has all the talk of installing underwater gates, raising the seawall, and sealing the drains beneath the historic piazza fallen on deaf ears? Considering the convoluted political maneuvering behind the reconstruction of Venice's La Fenice Opera House (which burned to the ground in 1996), I wouldn't be surprised if plans to control flooding have been ignored by the government or, worse, stalled to the point of (excuse the pun) the whole project going under.

I suppose the recurring floods, allegedly compounded by global warming, were inevitable ever since someone came up with the absurd idea of building a city, not only on water, but on remarkably flimsy mudflats. Entire forests were destroyed to provide the millions of oak trees early urban architects sank to form the acres of landfill that support Venice's buildings. I quote from one of Stephen Fay's articles: "The city's foundations are unique. Venice stands on piles hammered eight feet deep into clay, covered by layers of larch wood, and topped off above the surface of the water by Istrian stone. The wood, preserved by the damp clay, lasts for centuries, but it is vulnerable: If it dries, it disintegrates; if it is undermined, whole buildings will collapse."

The Romanticism attached to this magical city wanes every time I take a vaporetto across the Grand Canal and witness sewage-caked water slapping against artfully carved doorways now hopelessly corroded. It doesn't take a scientific team to raise awareness of Venice's urgent geological challenges. Again, a casual vaporetto ride will show the first and second floors of buildings entirely submerged. The water is obviously not receding; it's steadily rising.

But there's a greater problem at work, and it's one that's more impossible to manage than chronic flooding: tourism. Centuries ago, when Venice controlled global trade, it became one of the wealthiest and most powerful cities in the world. Now it rakes in an exorbitant amount of money from its well-oiled tourism infrastructure. I get depressed every time I go to Venice (even if I spend time in the quieter residential areas) because I feel it's being run into the sea by the tourist trade. It's such a fragile city, I'm starting to think it should be enclosed in glass like a massive snow globe and observed at a safe distance. Of course, that's unrealistic.

So, for now, the locals will hang out their water-logged possessions to dry or throw them away; monuments and museums will get a good scrubbing and reopen; restaurants will once again display their insanely expensive prix-fixe menus; and by spring, millions of visitors will return and get swept away in what is doubtlessly one of the most enchanting places on the planet. But underneath, nature is planning its next assault. If it's any consolation, between 1923 and 1933, Piazza San Marco flooded seven times. In the 1990s alone, it was struck 114 times by acqua alta - and it's still standing. But how long can that sort of good fortune last? I hope indefinitely, yet hope is quite a flimsy thing upon which to hang the future of a city.

What's happening in Venice reminds me of another looming disaster in Italy: the potential eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Naples (the same volcano that buried Pompeii in 79 AD). Just the other day, I was speaking with a friend who lives just outside Naples. When I inquired about an evacuation plan, she laughed - and rightfully so. "Oh, there's supposedly a plan," she said, "But, in reality, because of its geographic placement, if Vesuvius were ever to erupt, it would be impossible to escape. So we just hope and pray that day never comes."

Venice seems to be of the same frame of mind.
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