Rome — A group of engineers and geology experts said Monday that they are considering injecting sea water under Venice to raise the waterlogged Italian city 30 centimetres and rescue it from the tides and floods that bedevil it.
“The main advantage of this project is that it would allow Venice to regain ... nearly the same amount of centimetres by which it sank over the last 300 years,” said Giuseppe Gambolati, the head of the project.
The $138.5-million Canadian project entails digging 12 holes with a 30-centimetre diameter within a 10-kilometre area around the city of Venice, and to pump sea water into the ground at a depth of 700 metres, said Gambolati, an engineer and professor at the University of Padua.
The sea water is expected to make the sand that lies underneath expand, which combined with a topping of waterproof clay would eventually push up the soil, Mr. Gambolati said.
He said the experts are planning to test the project on a small area.
“If the pilot-project proves successful, we will see an immediate benefit, even though gradual, while the complete elevation will be achieved in around 10 years,” he said.
The project – still in its initial phase – it will have to be discussed and evaluated by various city, regional and state commissions before being approved.
Venice is threatened by water on several fronts. The city is sinking while the level of the Adriatic Sea is rising, so high tides are becoming more frequent, flooding into famed St. Mark's Square and prompting officials to set up raised plank walkways.
The decades-old debate on how to save Venice from water brought approval in 2003 of another vast project to build a flood barrier to ease the effect of high tides.
Dubbed Moses, after the biblical figure who parted the Red Sea, that project calls for hinged barriers to be built in the seabed just off Venice that could be raised when high tides threaten the city. Completion of the project, which would cost almost $6-billion, is expected by 2010-2011.
Giovanni Mazzacurati, the president of the New Venice Consortium, the agency overseeing the Moses project, said careful testing on the new project will be needed to verify its most critical point: the evenness of the elevation.
“Venice is in a delicate situation, its structure is very fragile,” he said. “Should parts of it be elevated in a different way, this would cause the city to crumble.”
Mr. Gambolati said that, according to his preliminary studies, the project is not expected to affect Venice's stability.
The two experts also said that the project will not be in conflict with the Moses project, but would simply be an additional help should there be any future rise of sea levels.
