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Venetians vote to ban giant cruise ships from city's lagoon
Venetians have voted in favour of banning 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 Sunday, 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 around 55,000 but a few voting booths were also set up in Mestre and Marghera, nearby 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, directly and indirectly, 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, told The Telegraph.
“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 – we’re back to where we started.
“The results of this vote should send a strong signal. We’re sick and tired of the situation and 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, however, saying that the route would require the dredging of a new shipping lane to accommodate the massive ships. “We oppose any new dredging because it would be devastating for the environment,” said Mr Mazzolin.
Instead, they back an alternative plan which involves the construction of an entirely new cruise ship terminal at one of the three entrances to the lagoon.
Called Venice Cruise 2.0, the terminal would consist of a 2,000ft-long pier capable of accommodating four large ships at a time. Passengers would then be transferred to smaller boats which would take them to Venice proper.
Venice’s centre-Right mayor dismissed the referendum, saying it had no official legitimacy. Luigi Brugnaro said the vote was “political and dishonest”, saying that campaigners were “making up the rules by themselves”. Simone Venturini, a member of the city council, described the “so-called” referendum as “boorish”.
The campaigners acknowledged that they had organised the referendum themselves and that it was not binding. But they hailed it as “a grand exercise in direct democracy.”
They said Venetians who objected to the big ships came from across the political spectrum and from all walks of life.
“The No Big Ships movement is the worst nightmare of our mayor and his administration,” campaigners said in a statement.
“Policy makers need to take account of the 18,000 votes – not just the port authority, but the mayor and the national government.”
Venetians have long complained that cruise ship passengers, along with the millions of other tourists who arrive by plane and train, are contributing to the “Disneyfication” of Venice, in which locals are unable to go about their daily business and are forced to move away in search of non-tourism jobs and cheaper rents.