Large Ships, Contorta project

Venice - It will not have any significant effects on the hydraulic assets of the lagoon, it provides almost six and a half million tons of non-polluting silt to use for works of morphological recovery in the central lagoon and it would even guarantee a repopulation of the fish. Paolo Costa, president of the Port Authority of Venice, has presented the preview of the excavation project of the Contorta-Sant’Angelo Channel to solve the problem of large cruise ships accessing Venice. Costa foresees the works will go on for 19 months. The economic plan established the costs of the project as follows: 42 million for the excavation and recalibration, 71 million for the morphological recovery and 33 million for subservices (check the costs). Costa said of this: “I have plans to recover these numbers, but the government must decide. Anyway, I am confident this problem can be solved in spite of the terrible conditions of public treasury. In any case, it is clear that all works will be open for European bids”. Before presenting the specific details of the project together with the technicians, Costa has reviewed the issue of large ship access in Venice. Costa stated: “we started with an objective which was not ours, the one set up by the Clini-Passera decree that later crystalized into government policy, but we have made it our own. It has been a long, complex and articulated work, and we pushed ahead in spite of a negative climate. We have tried to meet every request sent to our institutional tasks. The challenge was to solve a complex problem starting from the philosophy of the agreement, “Venice is the Lagoon” while at the same time historically it is a “port”. In order to answer complex problems, Politicians with a capital P should not lead to swingeing cuts, but look to achieve a collective good”. Costa then underlined the fact that “transforming the Contorta-Sant’Angelo channel in an environmental recovery project is an additional challenge, transforming a constraint into an objective”. He highlighted that “the project was presented for the first time on March 8th 2012, some time has been wasted and we will attempt to recover it”.