About F%$#ing Time

Italy has finally decided to ban cruise ships the Venice lagoon in August, which should mitigate the damage created by the massive vessels:

Aiming to protect a “national monument,” Italy’s government Tuesday moved to ban massive cruise ships from sailing directly into Venice and limit access to its fragile lagoon, definitively altering mass-scale tourism to the City of Canals.

The government’s decision, which will take effect Aug. 1, will put a stop to the contentious image that has come to symbolize many of overtouristed Venice’s problems: fuel-guzzling ships, taller than the city’s bell towers, passing through the historical waterways and depositing thousands of passengers in the heart of the old city.

Prime Minister Mario Draghi called it a “step for the protection of the Venetian Lagoon.”

The move was made under pressure, just days before the United Nations’ cultural protection agency, UNESCO, was set to discuss listing Venice as an endangered World Heritage site. A UNESCO document from June specifically called on Italy to ban big cruise ships from the lagoon and move with the “utmost urgency.”

The cruise ships have long posed a conundrum in Venice, pitting economic needs — the cruise industry in Venice employs several thousand people — against a fragile ecosystem. Opponents of the cruise ships in Venice have protested for years, saying that the wakes caused by the ships contribute to erosion and that day-tripping, mass-scale tourism is incompatible with a relatively small, compact city.

The ban applies to ships of more than 25,000 tons. The massive cruise ships that have sailed into Venice’s harbor can be nearly four times that weight.

………

“The continued deteriorating effects of human intervention, combined with climate change on the vulnerable lagoon ecosystem, threaten to result in irreversible change,” UNESCO had said last month.

These ships have been shaking the city and the lagoon to pieces for decades.  It's good that they will be excluded from the region now.