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Ships could dock in new port outside the
lagoon.
“Of course, the best thing for the environment
would be to do nothing,” says Paolo Costa, the president of the Venice Port
Authority (VPA), who nonetheless is lobbying hard for a large channel, 120m wide
at its maximum, to be dredged through the lagoon to enable the cruise ships to
enter the Marittima port in Venice by a back route, thereby eliminating their
passage through the town.
 Speaking
to the La Nuova di Venezia newspaper on 9 April, he made clear that he believes
the damage to the lagoon this project would cause is a necessary evil. “Over the
four years in which the government has pondered a solution to the cruise ship
problem, we have lost 10% of the trade at a time when the cruising industry as a
whole is expanding. [It] is a gold mine for the city.”
An alternative solution being considered by the ministry of the environment is
to build a fully reversible structure in the sea outside the Lido entrance to
the lagoon and bring the cruise ship passengers into the Venice port by special
boats designed to produce almost no wake and no polluting emissions.
With a pier measuring 940m by 34m, designed by the Genoese firm Duferco
Engineering, the new port would be capable of accommodating up to five large
ships and handling 24,000 passengers a day. It would take 26 months to build and
would cost €144m, the same as the channel favored by Costa.
The proponents of the Lido port point out that it would not only spare the
lagoon from damage that would have serious implications for Venice itself, but
that it would be more economical in the long run, as the mobile barriers between
the lagoon and the sea (expected to be completed in 2017) will have to be closed
for longer and longer periods due to sea-level rise, making the passage of big
ships impossible. Under current conditions, the barriers will be closed around
15 times a year, but in just 20 years, this may be as often as 40 times, which
would play havoc with cruise ships’ schedules.
Duferco has the skills and size to be able to carry out this project (named
Venis Cruise 2.0)—it has a turnover of €4bn and has built many ports and
infrastructure schemes—but it has to compete with short-term interests, which
tend to govern Venice in most situations. Costa is a powerful man in the Venice
and Rome contexts: a former chair of the European Parliament’s committee on
transport and tourism and a former mayor of Venice, with the support of the
current mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, and of the regional government for continuing to
bring the ships into the lagoon. In addition, recent financial operations work
against any reduction in the business of the Marittima.
The VPA, the state body of which Costa is head, owns 53% of a commercial company
called Venice Terminal Passeggeri (VTP) that manages the Marittima port, valued
at €50m, with capital reserves of €27m. Last month, the VPA announced that it
had sold 35% of VTP for €24m to a consortium of cruise ship companies (MSC,
Costa Cruises, Royal Caribbean) and the port operator Global Liman, to be held
in the name of Venezia Investimenti. With this, the owners of the “grandi navi”
are making it clear that they are buying into the status quo.
In the meantime, opponents of bringing the cruise ships into the lagoon have
weakened their political clout by splitting, with some supporting Venis Cruise
2.0 and others, including the minister of culture, Dario Franceschini, and the
private heritage lobby group Fondo Ambiente Italiano, favoring the transfer of
the whole cruising business to the town of Trieste. Since this would cause
Venice to lose 5,000 jobs, this is not a popular position with anyone in the
city. |
