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Venice Remains Submerged Even as Flood Waters Begin to Recede

Venice is headed for its second exceptionally high tide in a week.

Venice Remains Submerged Even as Flood Waters Begin to Recede
Scaffolding surrounds the Venetian-Byzantine style palace ‘Ca’ Da Mosto’ during restoration work on the Grand Canal, in Venice, Italy. (Photographer: Federico Vespignani/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Water levels in Venice have begun to recede after the historic city suffered another major flood surge, complicating efforts to protect homes, monuments and art works in one of the most-visited cities in the world.

The water rose to about five feet above benchmark levels on Sunday only days after topping six feet on Wednesday, the highest since 1966. The level peaked at about 1:30 p.m., and the city’s famous St. Mark’s Square was once again closed to tourists after reopening yesterday as the famed 11th century basilica remains flooded.

The damage to the historical city is already estimated at about 1 billion euros ($1.11 billion), Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro told newspaper Il Messaggero on Saturday. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Thursday declared a state of emergency for the city, releasing 20 million euros for urgent repairs. The mayor has set up a bank account to collect donations for the restoration of the city.

“Venice in this moment has the solidarity of the whole country” and from a tragedy like the current one “we can prove that when Italy is united, it can achieve great results,” Brugnaro said in an interview with CNN. “We thank the people of Italy and the whole world who are reaching out to us and want to help,” adding that “before money there is solidarity.”

While the frequency of flooding, known as “acqua alta,” has been increasing steadily in Venice in recent years, instances of water rising more than 150 centimeters above the benchmark are rare and usually occur about once in a decade. The flood waters have damaged homes, restaurants and monuments across the canal-laced city. Service on the Venice’s water buses, known as vaporetti, has been disrupted and schools in the area were closed.

Venice Remains Submerged Even as Flood Waters Begin to Recede

Both Brugnaro and Environment Minister Sergio Costa called for the urgent completion of the mobile dams currently under construction to protect the Venice lagoon from exceptional tides. The project, dubbed MOSE, is way over budget at 5.5 billion euros and counting, and won’t be ready until at least 2022. The project is years behind schedule. It’s also the target of several corruption investigations and has been plagued by technical failures.

“Also to me it seems unacceptable that MOSE, after many years and many billions spent, has not been completed,” Costa told La Stampa in an interview on Saturday. “It should be completed at the earliest. Even if it’s 93%-done, the part missing is not allowing it yet to function.”

--With assistance from Giovanni Salzano.

To contact the reporters on this story: Chiara Remondini in Milan at cremondini@bloomberg.net;Maria Ermakova in Milan at mermakova@bloomberg.net;Alessandro Speciale in Rome at aspeciale@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Celeste Perri at cperri@bloomberg.net, James Amott

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