Science News Archive

New Flood Gates for Venice

The Italian government is planning to spend £1.6 billion pounds on a system of inflatable flood gates to protect the city of Venice. There will be 79 gates in total and they'll be inflated whenever the sea level gets dangerously high, which happens about 50 times a year. But this scheme is coming in for criticism because people say it will damage the ecology in Venice's lagoon. With world sea levels set to rise by up to a metre over the next hundred years I'm sure we'll be seeing lots more arguments over Flood defences.

16th Dec 2001