Oops! No one closed the flood gates!

What a shame. Why is the threshold for opening so high? Is it about impact on ship/boat traffic?

The article also says they had a miscalculated weather forecast on Tuesday but during the trial period the levels are different from what it will be when the city of Venice takes control from the national government. It was a couple of things combined.

Kind of like a life guard will make an attempt to save a drowning person in the deep end of the pool, but if you are drowning at the shallow end, you are on own ?

Do Italians have to wait until at least two rooms of their house is on fire before the fire dept. will respond?

Is it an argument over who pays the power bill to move the gates?

Truly a puzzling and sad situation

Is there no occasion that doesn't call for some people to complain about government, regardless of the facts?
If the MOSE had been left to market forces or to businessmen more generally, it would never have been made in the first place.

This is on my mind because of the popularity of so many tourist destinations in the USA, like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Grand Canyon, which would not exist except for government action -- these sites, and so many others that make America great, were opposed by the free market and interfered with by private commercial interests at every step in their creation and/or preservation. The best things in our own country, those that make us exceptional, were the result of enlightened government, not private enterprise.
[Possible exception are the libraries funded by Carnegie, but that's a complicated story]

^ I must say that I was not aware that the government created the Grand Canyon. Amazing.

Put the Dutch in charge. It is what they do.

@Kateja - Second that!
For example, Deltawerken or Maeslantkering!

The US government protected the Grand Canyon from mining interests, and proposals to dam it up.

Sounds like, in this case, they had an agreed-upon plan on when to use it, and followed the plan. Politicians always second-guess things after the fact rather than taking responsibility for the decision-making.

I didn't detect a "complaint about government" in any of the above posts. Maybe something got deleted?

My question was why the tide-height threshold for using MOSE has been so high. Presumably it can't be used all the time without cutting off Venice from all traffic to/from the Adriatic. And there must be a cost when it's used. Are there other tradeoffs? How were they weighed against each other?

I guess I should be asking the Italian and Venetian authorities about this, but it's easier to ask the talented amateurs on this forum. Maybe someone who lives there will have something to offer.

BTW, I agree that government didn't create the Grand Canyon, but I'm glad someone blocked my great-grandfather's 1924 proposal to build gigantic dams at both ends of it and flood most of the Southwest. Imagine Moab as a seaport.... ;-)

Dick, isn't blaming failures of policy on bureaucrats (OP), blaming gov't? If you don't read the article, you'd infer that some lazy or incompetent bureaucrat forgot to push a button, but thats apparently not the case. But thats just a side track to the discussion, anyway. 🙂

What I don't know about modern Venetian history and politics is a lot, but even I am aware that the underlying causes of the flooding have more to do with industrial over-exploitation of the aquifer and short-sighted construction by shipping companies than with gov't mismanagement -- that the latter is just the icing or veneer on a couple centuries' worth of corporate greed that extends down to today's cruise industry.

Rick's frequent radio show guest Fred Plotkin has mentioned this and it appears in other spots even within just the RS website and publications - the instance of Venice's flooding fits into the larger sad story of how the rich and powerful make a mess and everyone else is left to clean it up. Benefits are concentrated for the few, while costs are distributed to the many. And benevolent efforts by gov't to contain or ameliorate those costs is labeled 'burdensome regulation' while attempts to recover the benefits for more people is labeled 'socialism'.

I repeat that what draws travelers here to the USA is most often the consequence of active gov't intervention (like the New Deal or the Nat'l Park Service) which has, partially, prevented the destruction of our natural wonders by market forces and the creation of our culture and arts masterpieces by gov't support.

Just to chase the conversational rabbit closer to the rim of the Grand Canyon.....
The childhood farm of a dear friend is now at the bottom of Mark Twain Lake in Missouri

This is truly edifying. I never knew the Grand Canyon was built by government. That must have been added to Geology texts since I took it in college ;-)

Italy's government is a mess and has a long tradition of being so. That's why trains running on time back in the 1930's is still considered impressive . Italian tax evasion is an ongoing issue with the EU as is Italy's inability to stick to their commitments regarding federal budgets.

Venice is magic and part of the fun is that it's in Italy.

Italy's inability to stick to their commitments regarding federal budget

Me, the capital markets and the EU thought that having a primary balance in surplus for 24 years in a row was enough to stick with anyone's commitments, but I am sure that some guy who took the "trains in 30s" joke seriously has a better understanding of national accounting. Avoiding the shut down every other year must be a thrilling experience for you... just like constantly being a net contributor to the EU from 1952 to 2019 has been thrilling for us.
Anyway if I were an American (and I had a little sense of the ridiculous) I'd avoid speaking about other countries' railway systems.

If you and a couple of Know-it-all above wasted 15 minutes to read either the linked article or Mona's message #3, you'd easily discover that the MoSE monitoring system will be fully functional in summer 2021 and that during the test & trials phase with human control this is the way it is meant to work. They could turn into spam a couple of stubborn engineers working down there any time the tide goes over 110 cm, but the families wouldn't appreciate it.

I don't mean to pile on from Dario but I hadn't before now because I didn't think that our community could be so stupid and ill-informed as to find gr88 and Brad's jokes the least bit funny --
the thought that people here on the RS forum might be so poorly informed and ignorant about the history of the Grand Canyon really disturbs me --
let's not go further and inquire about their awareness of the history of Niagara Falls or the Great Lakes or the many many other natural wonders that make America great which are the product of government care and preservation.

Just sayin':

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/italy-avoids-eu-sanctions-after-reaching-2019-budget-agreement

Are we also now saying that Niagara Falls was created by government? I guess we should stop referring to "natural wonders" then.

Oh Brad, you’re just being silly cranky now... it’s the Canadians who created Niagara Falls.