Campaign For A Living Venice

The Port plan would create a revolution on the movement of the tides, on the integrity of the islands and mud flats, on the fauna and flora and also on the residents of the city, given the millions of cruise passengers that the plan foresees

By Aleramo Lanapoppi

Very serious things are happening in our lagoon. Things that will change it drastically, and that are being approved by politics before everyone’s eyes. The general plan is very clear and is being implemented step by step, under the direction of the current president of the Port, Fulvio Lino Di Blasio, who is also the Extraordinary Government Commissioner for cruises in Venice. It is difficult to report in a few words, but I will try.

On August 1, 2021, the Draghi government approved legislation that prohibits the transit of large ships in the lagoon and requires the construction of a port on the open sea where they will have to stop.
Some ships will be provisionally allowed to enter, but only those that are not very large, while waiting for the new port to be built.

In the meantime, UNESCO issued a recommendation, one that is binding if the Lagoon is to maintain its status as a World Heritage Site: large cruise ships must not be allowed to enter. The port authority, the cruise companies, the entire commercial world linked to the supply chain of large ships reacted quickly and skillfully. They decided that the proverbial slowness of work and construction in Italy would be used to create temporary solutions that will actually remain permanent, or rather more likely as additions to the phantasm of a port to come.

A tender was launched for the creation of the port, and the thing immediately nearly ground to a halt as expected: right away there is an appeal in court, nothing moves, and practical matters stagnate. But in the meantime, there is a rush to create the “temporary” port.

A plan is made, as needs to be done. Provisionally, large ships will enter through the Canale dei Petroli. This means that it will be necessary to make it deeper and much wider by excavating millions of cubic meters of seabed. An existing canal, named after Vittorio Emanuele III, is chosen to allow ships that are not huge (which would clog up traffic) an ingress, and it is decided to carry out extensive excavations here too, until it reaches the necessary width.

All of this digging will generate millions of cubic meters of sludge, much of it toxic given the presence of an enormous industrial area. Where can it be dumped? The plan is that a gigantic artificial island of 36 hectares and thirty meters high will be built of the stuff in the middle of the Lagoon.

No sooner said than done, the plans were drawn up and presented to the government for approval, which will be guaranteed by a strong and united majority. The only possible obstacle is the obligation to submit the plan to the VIA (Environmental Impact Assessment), the committee members of which should be horrified, if nothing else, by the revolution that the whole plan would create on the movement of the tides, on the integrity of the islands and mud flats, on the fauna and flora and also on the residents of the city, given the millions of cruise passengers that the plan foresees (about a million people a year).

But would the proponents of the plan have been so naive as to operate in the uncertainty of a negative VIA? It is a safe bet that they have powerful secret weapons in store to safely overcome even that last obstacle.

Source: https://www.lanapoppi.it/2025/03/01/rivoluzioni-importanti-in-laguna/