Word: marghera
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...three different cities. There is the historic town built on 118 alluvial islands in a lagoon, plus two other communities on the mainland: the bleak, modern residential suburb of Mestre, which the daily Corriere della Sera calls a "delirium of concrete," and the huge, fume-filled industrial port of Marghera. Any action to help Venice often turns out to harm her ugly sisters. For example, Venice is sinking in part because the pumping of fresh water from artesian wells in Mestre and Marghera depletes the underground "cushion" of water on which Venice floats. If the pumping is stopped to save...
Trouble is, Marghera is partly built on the mud flats, and the city earmarked another 10,000 acres of adjacent marshlands for new factories. By banning any further municipal intrusion into the marshes-including proposed landfill projects in Mestre-the new law will severely limit the growth of both cities. Indeed, Marghera's importance is bound to wane-probably with adverse economic effect on Venice. "If you take away the industrial sector," warns Critic Vladimiro Dorigo, "it means killing the whole place...
There is a possible compromise. Manmade locks might be built to control the dangerous high tides. Stretching across the three natural openings between Venice's lagoon and the Adriatic, the locks would open to let ships reach Marghera and would close to prevent Venice from being swamped in tidal water. That would allow further building on the mud flats-if the state decides to spend some $80 million on the locks...