Venetians vote for cruise ships ban
ITALY: Venetians have voted to ban giant cruise ships from the city’s lagoon, saying they disgorge too many tourists and damage the environment.
More than 18,000 Venetians voted in an unofficial referendum organised by a campaign group on Monday, with nearly 99 per cent saying they wanted the vessels kept away and offered alternative docking facilities.
They were asked: ‘‘Do you want big cruise ships to stay outside Venice’s lagoon and no new shipping channels dug inside the lagoon?’’
The population of Venice is about 55,000 but a few voting booths were also set up in Mestre and Marghera, industrial areas on the mainland.
The referendum was the latest chapter in a saga that has dragged on for years and which pits residents against the powerful cruise ship lobby.
Locals say the huge vessels have a damaging visual impact on a delicate World Heritage-listed cityscape of church spires, merchants’ palaces, narrow canals and delicate stone bridges.They claim the cruise ships create waves which damage canal banks and churn up the muddy floor of the lagoon.
The industry says cruise ships support thousands of jobs, and bring in vital revenue.
‘‘It was a very positive result,’’ Luciano Mazzolin, a member of the No Big Ships Committee, the pressure group that organised the referendum, said.
‘‘The ships need to remain outside the lagoon. We’ve had five years of discussion on this by the city council and the Italian government, and we’ve got nowhere. The results of this vote should send a strong signal. We can’t endure this inertia for any longer.’’
The cruise ships are at their most visible and intrusive when they plough past the entrance to St Mark’s Square and head down the Giudecca Canal to the international cruise ship terminal.
Over the years it has been proposed that new routes be adopted which would involve the vessels entering the lagoon from the Adriatic but then bypassing Venice’s historic centre and docking at a port on the mainland.
The organisers of the referendum are against that, saying the route would require the dredging of a new shipping lane to accommodate the massive ships.
Instead, they back an alternative plan which involves the construction of a new cruise ship terminal at one of the three entrances to the lagoon. The terminal would consist of a 600-metre pier accommodating four large ships at a time. Passengers would then be transferred to smaller boats which would take them to Venice proper.
Luigi Brugnaro, Venice’s centre-Right mayor, dismissed the referendum, saying it had no official legitimacy. He said it was ‘‘political and dishonest’’ and campaigners were ‘‘making up the rules by themselves’’.
Simone Venturini, a member of the city council, described the ‘‘socalled’’ referendum as ‘‘boorish’’.
The campaigners accepted the referendum was not binding but they hailed it as ‘‘a grand exercise in direct democracy’’.
Venetians have long complained that cruise ship passengers are contributing to the ‘‘Disneyfication’’ of Venice, in which locals are unable to go about their business and are forced to move away. – Telegraph Group