Italian jobs in the rivers?

A recent article in an Italian on-line environmental publication, Greenreport.it, provides a reminder of a looming deadline for water quality in lakes and rivers.  An E.U. directive from 2000 sets the deadline for Italy and other member countries for next year.  Those failing to meet the standards face economic sanctions meant to be serious enough to draw governmental attention.  So far, though, the new Renzi government hasn’t seemed to give water issues, or the environment generally, much attention.  The Greenreport article, perhaps as a kind of signal flag aimed at Rome, includes a reminder that environmental cleanup can produce a lot of jobs.  It cites a recent Ambente Italia report estimating that an investment of 27 billion in the water sector over the next ten years could produce something like 45,000 jobs.  I have a feeling that, rather than new investment, we're more likely to see Italy asking Brussels to postpone the deadline -- and sanctions -- for a few years.  And they probably won't be alone in making the request.

Il Fiume Topino near Cannara, Italy.  More of an irrigation canal at this point.  © rmounts

"No Tav": Turin-Lyon train line

Certainly lots of environmental issues are more significant than the high-speed rail line between Turin, in Italy, and Lyon, in France.  But an article on the project in today's Corriere della sera caught my eye.  I have a personal interest in the line having once followed the route on a train from Milan to Paris.  I'd paid for a ticket on a high-speed train, but in fact very little of it was high-speed until after we passed through the mountains and got into France.

For years, the French and Italian rail companies, backed by political authorities, have wanted to modernize the rail connection between the two cities.  The most dramatic engineering feature of the line is a planned 57 km long tunnel from the Susa Valley in Italy to the Maurienne Valley in France.  (Several famous Tour de France climbs, like the Col du Télégraphe, the Col du Croix de Fer, and the Col de la Madeleine, rise out of the Maurienne Valley.)

Environmentalists in both countries oppose the line out of concern, among others, for its impact on a fragile alpine ecology.  Questions have also been raised, especially in France, about its costs.  Lately, in Italy, elements of the "No Tav" ("Treno alta velocità") opposition has become violent.  The article in Corriere della Sera reported what is counted as the 15th incident of sabotage against the line.  Yesterday, while workers were off for lunch, someone entered a worksite at Bussoleno in the Susa  Valley and set fire to a piece of heavy equipment.  Bussoleno is about 50 km west of Turin.

This kind of violence is never acceptable opposition. It's dangerous and extortionist and those found responsible deserve serious judicial sanction, never mind their motives.  Still, I'm not sure yet where I stand on the matter of the line itself.  Will it, in fact, cause environmental harm?  I've visited the Maurienne Valley and it is not an isolated alpine environment, at least down along the highway running along the Arc River.  And that highway, as I rode my bike next to it, seemed to be carrying quite a bit of truck traffic.  Wouldn't that freight travel with a lot less pollution on a train?

Venice inundated

I touched on the problem of large cruise ships invading Venice once before.  These floating multi-story hotels, crowding into the Giudecca Canal, bringing thousands of passengers up close to the Doge's Palace and the Campanile in Piazza San Marco, are part of a larger complex of issues connected to how to save the city from tourism and from rising sea waters.  

© Andrea Pattaro/AFP

 Anna Somers Cocks, in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books, discusses all of this.  It's an excellent and unsettling article.

In 1987, Italy sought, and was granted, designation of Venice as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  As part of the designation agreement, Italy promised to develop and implement a management plan for the city and a buffer zone around it.  The French chateaux in the Loire Valley are protected by such a plan.  Only in November of last year did the Venice City Council publish a plan, 25 years after the original World Heritage designation.  Cocks, a former chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund and now the editor of The Art Newspaper, is deeply critical of what they produced for failing to address the critical threats to Venice.  Without significant changes in governance and political will, she fears that the city will be overwhelmed by tourists and rising sea water.

Remember the Costa Concordia

Thinking of taking a Mediterranean cruise, maybe running along the beautiful Italian coast, stopping in at scenic spots along the way?  Not to be a grinch, but remember the Costa Concordia?  Just over a month from today will be the one-year anniversary of the wreck of that sky-scraper sized cruise ship.  On 13 January of this year, the ship, running close to Giglio Island off the west coast of Italy, hit a rock that tore a long hole in the hull, flooding the engine room and causing the ship to run aground against the island.  At least 30 people died.  The ship is still there as an elaborate salvage operation tries to remove it.

Legambiente, the Italian environmental organization, has a short note on its web site today reminding people of the disaster.  The group calls on responsible public officials to proceed as quickly as possible with the removal and with the greatest possible transparence.  Apparently recent storms have caused the hull to shift slightly and to release toxic liquids into the surrounding waters.

The Costa Concordia was a case of a captain’s bad judgment.  But the tragedy focused attention, at least for a little while, on the enormous number of cruise ships running along the Italian coasts and on some of the issues they create.  For example in Venice.  In 2011, some 800 ships anchored in the lagoon bringing in an estimated 2 million passengers.  This was nearly double the number of ships arriving six years earlier with more than double the number of passengers.  These ships may be overwhelming an already fragile historic treasure.  Underwater turbulence from propellers appears to be damaging building foundations.  And it’s estimated that the ships collectively produce air pollution equivalent to 14,000 cars.  Environmentalists and some local officials are pushing to bar the ships from the lagoon and relocate them to an off-shore facility.

Michael Bradley and Roma

Yesterday’s La Repubblica included a nice surprise, an interview with Michael Bradley.  Bradley is a midfielder for Roma, one of Rome’s two soccer teams.  He may be the only American currently playing in Serie A (the Italian first division).  He’s also a regular member of the US national team. 

I’d guess this is the first time the paper has featured him and it’s kind of a big deal in a country that takes soccer as seriously as Italy does.  From what I can tell, he’s doing pretty well.  He’s playing midfield for one of the country’s major clubs, and, if not every game, he has started several.  The hook for the piece is tomorrow’s match between Roma and Lazio, the city’s other first division club.  The fact that this will be Bradley’s first “derby” (game against traditional rivals, usually located close by)  He says he a bit of an “alien” to the event, but is ready.

Roma acquired him during the summer, apparently having been impressed with his play at another Italian team, Chievo of Verona.  Bradley is an excellent player and I doubt Roma would have taken him if they didn’t think he would be an asset.  But their initial consideration may have been helped by the fact that the team was recently bought by a group of American investors (some of whom also have interests in Liverpool FC and the Boston Red Sox).  It’s a complicated game.

[Headline: “Bradley, American model (as in model of car).  ‘You need to open your eyes; US soccer is serious’”]

 

Bergamo photos

It's past time to put up a post.  My Italian lessons have been keeping me busy and I keep finding that the time when I might write something gets used differently.  There's grocery shopping, exploring the Città Alta (Upper City), finding my way around Bergamo proper, and enjoying dinners with the Terzis and their friends.  That has been one of the really special things about this stay.

Anyway, I've been taking pictures here and there, nothing like the number I did during the Umbria photo workshop, but some to record the world seen from my apartment and a little of what I've seen as I've walked around.  So this post, and maybe more, will focus on photographs.

This was the view from my apartment window looking northeast.  The first week I was here, it rained and the temperatures dropped to the low to mid-30s. 

 The next morning when the sun came up, the mountains had what people were saying was the earliest snowfall in the mountains that they could remember.

 A few days later, we finally had sunshine.

 My apartment, the vantage point for the pictures above, is that box on the roof just in front of the bell tower on the church of Sant'Allesandro della Croce, the patron saint of Bergamo.  The pictures were taken from from the left side.  Fortunately, the last bells are at 9 p.m., I think; and they wait until 7 a.m. to restart.  This photo was taken from the wall surrounding the Città Alta, the oldest part of Bergamo.  The street layout in the Città Alta still shows the influence of the original Roman settlers and many of the major buildings -- churches and public buildings -- were built in the medieval and renaissance periods.

 All the rain has made bike rides difficult, but I finally got out last Wednesday afternoon.  I set off without having any particular route; I was riding into the Brembana Valley and hoped, after braving busy roads for a few kilometers, I might be rewarded with some small, lightly-traveled mountain roads.  Not quite.  I made it up to Zogno, here, about 15 km north of Bergamo.  I did manage to find some quiet side roads above the main road running along the river, but not enough of them.  I've now talked to a couple of avid riders who live in the area and know the climbs, so I'm hoping for something better next time out.

Wash Day

This photography stuff gets to be a lot of work.  I found myself thinking something like this yesterday while we were visiting Assisi.  I found myself thinking that I wasn't seeing anything new, anything I hadn't seen earlier in the week.  Old stone buildings, narrow streets, shadows and light in churches and arcades; they seemed to be the same in Assisi as they were elsewhere.  So I looked for something else and ended up finding laundry.  Thursday became my wash day.  Also, I think that sometimes I may prefer visiting a place to absorb the history and art, just taking photos "for the record."  Walking around, concentrating only on making images, when there is so much in the streets and buildings that I'm ignoring, bothered me.  As our guide through the Basilica said, often the best camera is our eyes and brain, except, of course, that mine don't store images as well as iPhoto does.  Here are a few things from "wash day."

A note from Cannara

Since last Saturday, Lynda and I have been in Cannara, Umbria, as part of a week-long photography workshop.  A couple, professional photographers who live near us in Northwest Washington D.C. -- Frank von Riper and Judith Goodman -- are leading the group, which includes just six of us.  We're staying in a very nicely modernized old farm house, the "Fattoria del Gelso," which I'm guessing may have been the home for tenant farm families until sometime in the 1950s or 1960s.  Since Sunday, our van driver, a remarkable American woman whose driving is the least of her talents, has been taking us to picturesque -- literally -- towns nearby -- Bevagna, Montefalco, and today, Orvieto.  So far, our visits have incluced a few hours of taking pictures and nearly as much time around the table.  Both have been challenging.  I'll try to say more later about the workshop, but for the moment here are some examples of what I've been seeing.

Mount Subasio and the agricultural valley around Cannara

Fattoria del Gelso ("Mulberry Farmhouse") on the right at the end of the line of trees

 

A convertsation in Bevagna (near Cannara)

Antipasti in Montefalco

Lunch in Bevagna

A Montefalco wall