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Venice’s Tidal Barrier Put to the Test

Venice’s highly controversial sea defence system successfully held back the
tide on 3rd October 2020. MOSE - an acronym for its official name in Italian -
prevented St. Mark’s Square and around half of the city’s streets from being
submerged in more than a metre of water.

Planned since 1988, the much-maligned project has been plagued by

scandals and setbacks. Despite this, Venice mayor Luigi Brugnaro declared
the system a roaring success.

MOSE is made of 78 yellow guards that pop out of the sea during times of
high tide. These guards are divided into four barriers strategically located
around the entrances to the lagoon, each with their own gates able to admit
ships and vessels through.

The guards will typically lie dormant, filled with seawater, but in the event of a
high tide are pumped full of compressed air causing them to rise to the
surface and divert incoming water. The system should be able to protect the
city from tides up to three metres high.

The use of the system on 3 October was, however, technically still just a test.
The final handover is not scheduled until December 2021 and many believe
the system still has a lot to prove.

Under construction since 2003, the project’s cost has risen sharply, from an
original estimate of USD $1.8BN to now well over USD $6BN. In 2014 more
than 30 people were arrested on charges of political corruption linked to
MOSE, including the then-mayor of Venice Giorgio Orsoni.

Orsoni himself was charged with the misuse of public funds from the project.

The Italian government then put MOSE under extraordinary management,

installing three special chief executive officers. Now that the system is close
to finishing, many have criticised whether rising sea levels will render it
obsolete, or worse, create an environmental disaster.

If the gates are forced to be left permanently up, the lagoon will turn into a
stagnant breeding ground for algae. The full operating and maintenance costs
of the project are still unknown, worrying many Venetians that they will be
unmanageable.

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