The committees: “The lagoon is a fragile environment, Vittorio Emanuele should not be excavated”. The shore community of Cavallino Treporti vows to fight the project for a terminal in the Lido canal: “These are lagoon waters”
By Vera Mantengoli
30 April 2022
VENICE. Comitato No Grandi Navi and Ambiente Venezia have announced a demonstration for 28 May at Zattere, and a complaint to the Public Prosecutor’s Office “because the Lagoon has become a spread-out port”. Friday afternoon in Campo San Tomà the associations explained the reasons for the flotilla of boats on Saturday 30 April, starting with a meeting at 10 at San Trovaso with about fifteen boats, which were joined by other citizens in boats.
On Saturday 30 April, as they have for ten years, the movements were present on their boats, following the route taken by the cruise ships to demonstrate against how destructive it is to the Lagoon. “We began protesting more than ten years ago, before the Costa Concordia tragedy, when going by boat we noticed the impact of the cruise ships on the Lagoon, and today we are still here denouncing the same thing”.
Armando Danella is angry: “We are going in the direction of transforming the temporary cruise ship docks into something permanent,” he explained. “They are aiming for Canale Nord, right near the Pili lands owned by Mayor Luigi Brugnaro and those owned by Confindustria President Vincenzo Marinese. And they want to excavate the Vittorio Emanuele, a canal that has been abandoned for thirty years, with a draft of four meters”. He cannot understand how not even studies by Ca’ Foscari and CNR, which have demonstrated that the passage of the ships through the Canale dei Petroli causes erosion in the Lagoon, have stopped the cruise ships.
And so Ambiente Venezia will file a complaint in the Procura against the provisional docks at Porto Marghera: “They are dangerous, there is mixture of commercial and passenger traffic, there is industry all around, clouds of coal and iron dust, and of all the other materials that are processed at the site. The cruise ship docks, which are being adapted without an environmental impact study, also risk delaying the reclamation work at Porto Marghera and the reconversion of the industrial area which have been needed for a long time, instead transforming everything into more parking lots and perhaps hotels for cruise ship passengers, giving yet more space to the tourism monoculture”.
In addition to this there is the recent TAR ruling in favor of Duferco – De Piccoli, creators of the Venis Cruise 2.0 project, who have always claimed that their Lido Terminal was outside protected waters. This has created no small problem for the Port Authority, which had excluded the project from its competition for ideas for an offshore port, because until the ruling it was considered to be within protected Lagoon waters.
Now, while attorneys at the Port Authority is trying to understand what to do, the municipal administration has reiterated that it does not want the project because it would have too great an impact. Joining them is the Mayor of Cavallino Treport: “It is not true that the [Duferco] project is outside the protected waters of the Lagoon” said Mayor Roberta Nesto. “We repeat our firm opposition, and we hope that the local and national authorities share this position”.
Source: La Nuova di Venezia e Mestre
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