Why Venice’s New €8 Billion Flood Barrier Only Kinda Works

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Video written by Ben Doyle
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[@rateeightx]

Since the Italian word for the sea, "Mare", is grammatically masculine, Whereas the Italian name of Venize, "Venezia", is grammatically feminine, I'd like to posit that the Sea is not Venice's wife, But in fact Venice's husband, With Venice being the wife.

[@QemeH]

Look at you and your traditional gender roles... ;P

[@garion742]

... So Venice is a battered woman?😅 That tracks

[@Blex_040]

Venice has to keep the people entertained and is getting washed up while the sea is getting hotter and comes back home high as fuck... jep, checks out 😂

[@bobidou23]

The way I’ve gotten used to American transit construction costs He said “it was supposed to cost €4.7b, but at the end it cost…” Me: What, twenty… Sam: “€8b!” Me: oh.

[@D.S.handle]

I was expecting at min €20b.

[@iulioh]

Barely an inconvenience

[@AdventurerSmithy]

By the standards I'm used to that number is still basically on budget.

[@hedgehog3180]

I'm frankly shocked that they were able to fit in corruption with such a small budget, large infrastructure projects going around twice over their budget is basically to expected even without corruption. Honestly gotta give credit to how efficient they are about their corruption in Italy.

[@maverick9708]

Yeah, honestly americas corruption and embezzlement puts all but the worst countries to shame. Veince thinks it can brag with just under 4billion € in couruption that equates to 50% of the project but America will see that and do it 4x harder for a 100billion project and we will all just expect it to happen

[@lizhutchinson6978]

Venice is not only a cultural treasure but a big money-maker. I'm sure it's worth the investment to save. They should implement tourist taxes to help fund it.

[@federicofabulli5030]

I am from Italy, and I own a small air b&b. We already have a tourist tax, you pay to the host of your air b&b, and then the host gives the money to the city. It varies from place to place, but if memory serves in Venice is 10€ per person per night. But I could be wrong, I work in Bologna, not in Venice. The prices are different

[@deleted-something]

lol

[@murilotheodoro5025]

Who's gonna pay to see a flooded city? ... Oh right, six geniuses just died paying millions to watch a flooded ship didn't they?

[@Ben-co9hy]

Yeah, I went to Venice this summer, there already is a tourist tax. We had to put a few euros in a paper wallet in the Airbnb, I imagine there’s a similar setup for hotels and stuff like that

[@ferretyluv]

The problem is they’re doing it too well and suffering from overtourism.

[@itsskip]

You could name the island after Moses' wife, Zippora. Then they can show Venice and the Adriatic Sea what a good, co-dependent relationship looks like.

[@MonkeyJedi99]

I propose... Batarang Island

[@nicholasvinen]

Surely the obvious name to choose is Islandy McIsleface.

[@PaarthGuptaYT]

@itsskip This is genius!

[@yitzakIr]

Plus it might squash the long standing beef between Italians and Jews

[@keiyakins]

Venice hasnt been in the sea ever since they married, can you blame her for wanting to change that?

[@easygoingdude9990]

Wow

[@cxzact9204]

🤯

[@doge820]

A ghe xe aqua alta par cento di ogni ano, no xe molto ma a mi me pare bàstanza vista la rotura de cojoni =100 days a year should be enough cmon 😅 Google translator won't translate that correctly, it's the venetian dialetct. (i tried to write it as best as i could but it's a dying language that doesn't get taught in schools :/ I learnt it from my grandparents but it's becoming less and less relevant, most people around here just use italian instead of the local dialetct)

[@Frahamen]

You're forgetting all the years they where dating unmarried 😳😳

[@franchezvibritannia7320]

Yes we can blame her. ☕️

[@glennhower9265]

Sam takes the "Americans will use anything but the metric system" meme VERY seriously

[@OGrandomunknownperson]

He's from Texas though

[@Blex_040]

​@@OGrandomunknownperson He's born and raised in Washinton D.C., but does that matter? Aren't most americans, regardless of their home state, allergic to the metric system? xD

[@OGrandomunknownperson]

@@Blex_040 i had a Brian fart and thought Texas was a country when making that comment

[@KuK137]

@@Blex_040 The ones with IQ above 90 are not...

[@Blex_040]

@@KuK137 So not most Americans ;P jk ^^

[@philsharp758]

I am torn between "Amy gets a rise" and "Brick" Island.

[@sirBrouwer]

Amy gets a Brick?

[@JimOHalloran]

I vote "Half As Island"!

[@jgr7487]

Huge props for Sam for both translating (in writing) & giving an interpretation (in audio) to acqua alta means. HAI unintentionally fixed a big issue translators have: either translating a term or explaining its concept.

[@yo.adrian]

I love it when HAI compares measurements with everyday objects.

[@steffenvongrabau7260]

Just regular freedom units, nothing unusual

[@obviousbear1289]

Really leaning into the "The US will use anything but meters as measurement" bit.

[@jonathanodude6660]

I hate it so much 😭

[@enterchannelname8981]

@@obviousbear1289 They hate meters so much they'll even use ... centimeters

[@altarancho]

As a Liberian, I’m very offended.

[@chrisn5956]

Man those flood gates could have been really useful that one time I left the bath water running on accident

[@56independent42]

70@@theerdalavignesh4443

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

They just need a bathtub drain at the bottom of Venice.

[@haiironezumi]

Honestly, the threshold of using MOSE being above what it takes to flood Piazza di San Marco makes sense - people *love* getting a shot of Venice underwater.

[@8paolo96]

well, just a few centimeters of water in a huge Piazza would not harm that much, but it's more important to keep water out of historical buildings

[@MatthewWunderlich]

I guess it depends if we should prioritize people’s homes and businesses or tourists taking photos for Instagram

[@KuK137]

@@MatthewWunderlich Hey, clown, you realize these homes are already built with this in mind and flooding stops massive ecological damage and pollution?

[@daves9172]

Congratulations to HAI for making the first accurate video about MOSE, everyone stops at the “lol overpriced project that doesn’t work, should’ve asked the dutch” while failing to understand the peculiarities about the venetian lagoon and the fact that MOSE was being developed as it was built. Really shows the difference between a channel that does his research and writes his own video and all the other chatgpt copy pasta.

[@Welgeldiguniekalias]

I would say spending billions in public funds before you finish the design is a very telling part of the problems surrounding this project, most of which could have been avoided with proper planning and expertise.

[@Leyrann]

Considering it's only good for at most a hundred years, and we (the Dutch) have already been mentioned in this video as someone to copy a longer-term solution from, I'm going to say that they should've asked us in the first place. Just build an Oosterscheldekering-like barrier, add a few sluices for the ships, and you should be good for _at least_ an extra one to two hundred years beyond what MOSE is good for - although at some point, you may be limited to opening the barrier only during _low_ tide to avoid the water level in the lagoon rising too much (you'd open it to keep the lagoon clean). Of course, that also has a solution, namely letting water flow in at a slower pace and pumping it back out, however I imagine that may be expensive. On the other hand, that's a 2300 AD problem and by that point we _probably_ have nuclear fusion figured out so that should make things easier. Also, even failing that you could use tidal generators on the in-flowing water to produce the power required to pump the water back out. This won't cover the _entire_ energy consumption (efficiency is always less than 100%), but it will cover part of it, possibly a significant part.

[@daves9172]

@@Welgeldiguniekalias it is not, the goal of mose wasn’t to protect the whole city, it was to allow for safe high tides (which are necessary to the lagoon) which also means flooding the lowest parts of the city, while allowing access to the port inside the lagoon, a special solution was necessary, it had never been built before, hence why it was developed along the building process, just like the first high speed rail lines

[@daves9172]

@@Leyrann Venice needed a custom solution, a regular barrier was evaluated and scrapped, as this would have cut off traffic to the port (mose allows marine traffic during high tides), and completely shielded the lagoon during high tides, which is not what the goal was.

[@alex9621]

​@@LeyrannThat's a lot of talking for someone that knows nothing about the subject. Wish I had 10% of your confidence

[@williandalsoto806]

Two HAI videos in less than 24 hours?! What a pleasant surprise!!!

[@sirBrouwer]

soon Amy will demand her own clown based dental care plan. O and more money. (only she did not say what kind of money so it will be imaginary pesos)

[@rundown132]

$$$$$$$$$$$

[@pedrojpinto]

Il Mare is masculine, Venezia is feminine. So, it is a marriage where the Sea is the husband and the City is the wife. In old-school Catholic tradition, that meant the City was willingly "submitting" to the Sea, for better, for worse... That makes sense for a seafaring state.

[@TheRavenir]

We should take Venice and push it somewhere else!

[@thecoolbird13]

or we can just sink it, i always wanted atlantis to be real

[@ChesterChi3]

Put it at the bottom of the sea, problem solved.

[@eichen97]

2:42 thanks for the real mesurements, some would appreciate imperial, but the ping pong tables just hit different.

[@AbsolXGuardian]

Now I want a WTYP episode on this. You know it's a good half as interesting episode when you want a 3 hour version of it

[@screwaccountnames]

Just make the seawall more rigid!

[@NadarCosainAmber]

More rigid, with much more soup-like homogenate

[@nikta8587]

wish new york had a semi-working flood barrier on friday

[@gregoryf3771]

The flooding didn't come from the bay/rivers here, it was an accumulation of rainwater that the storm drains couldn't clear quickly enough

[@theviniso]

@@gregoryf3771 Well, it hasn't come from the bay/river yet.

[@HeisenbergFam]

4:30 if I had a nickel for everytime human actions had ecological consequences, I would be a billionaire

[@xadielplasencia3674]

That is how most billionaires are made

[@kakahass8845]

If I had a nickel for every time human actions had ecological consequences I'd be the one causing those ecological consequences.

[@stansman5461]

I mean, every animal action had ecological consequences. Beavers create dams, flood one side and dry up another 😂

[@westrim]

I mean, you'd be a quintillionare, possibly more. Every human breath has an ecological consequence, every bite of food, every shit, and every step. "Ecological consequence" isn't even a value statement, just an acknowledgement that, good or ill, we all live on Earth.

[@person8064]

​@@westrimwe're humans, not ChatGPT, we can understand connotations

[@jonas1015119]

Any megaproject will inevitably cost double its estimate. Considering the corruption involved thats honestly pretty good. Imo they should put the entire city on hydraulic stilts like in Oceans Twelve and just raise or lower it at will

[@brsyauqi]

ok 3 HAI videos in 3 straight days, Sam is up to something

[@zarinaromanets7290]

He's up to his neck in bricks and plane parts, all this production is a direct result of the ecstasy he's experiencing!

[@joeym5243]

Just put a fish tank filter in the lagoon, that should keep it clean

[@sirBrouwer]

maybe add some water plants to it. That will make it look more alive.

[@Gamer3427]

@@sirBrouwer Can't forget one of those little treasure chests that bubbles flow to to make the lid occasionally open. It'll attract divers and increase tourism.

[@sirBrouwer]

@@Gamer3427 Only when we can add a little castle to it as well. Just a small one.

[@profwaldone]

You joke but that is legit a solution worth looking into, though it needs to be lagoon scale.

[@sirBrouwer]

@@profwaldone That is how we survive in the Netherlands. we have huge pumping stations all over the country constantly working at keeping the water at the best level. they also indirectly filter a lot of trash out of said water.

[@carolynthomas3938]

Marco’s Vineyard is a great name. I vote that one!

[@NINOGIANLUCA]

3:39 this island has a name: is "Isola Artificiale del Baccan di Sant'Erasmo"

[@QemeH]

That's like naming a child "female offspring" - that doesn't count...

[@NINOGIANLUCA]

@@QemeH is the real name...

[@QemeH]

@@NINOGIANLUCA I believe that it is named that on official chart or wherever you need to have a designation for it. But it's not a "name", really - it's more of a descriptor. It's like naming Manhatten "peninsula of the hudson estuary"...

[@magiciangob]

Thanks for the reminder there at the end that I'm not watching on Nebula. I was like, hey wait a minute why hasn't this stopped? Love all the extra episodes this week.

[@baylinkdashyt]

What a hell of a job illustrating the "Americans will go to any lengths to avoid using the metric system" meme!

[@GermansLikeBeer]

He literally used metric in this video

[@xavimaroto]

Great video as usual, but a quick Google Maps Search shows the island as "Isola Artificiale del Baccan di Sant'Erasmo" or Artificial Island of Saint Erasmus Bacan. Not italian so not sure if the name is right.

[@lastfire77]

Lol, I love how editor missed that "spill a spritz" means the drink (like an aperol spritz), not a spritz like from a spray bottle

[@raelsadd6378]

A great name for the unnamed island is Dave

[@sebastianmoore4875]

Isola del bacio del mare seems like it'd be a fitting name for that little island

[@EllaTheOctopus]

Three days, three HAI videos?

[@Nixplaystrombone]

2 HAI videos in one day? Sam, it's okay to sleep.

[@Ryu-hx5yy]

I love the upload speed of HAI currently

[@DavidCowie2022]

Mose: I'm going €4 billion over budget! HS2 rail link: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

[@exploshaun]

Just build more buildings on top of the old ones. I heard that's how the citiy used to work.

[@enderboy1824]

Daily HAI videos are fun

[@ananegg]

Only one answer can be given by a true HAI viewer. Brick Island.

[@jomiar309]

The use of anything but meters as a comparitive measurement was solid gold!

[@ClementinesmWTF]

Very strange seeing the Woodlands’ skyline in a video about Venice

[@jonathankneller4316]

Great use of that American math with tennis courts and ping pong tables 😂😂

[@Americanbadashh]

I'd call the nameless island, "The router", or the Italian equivalent. As it has a router like shape, and is involved with connecting systems together

[@hasanx8066]

History's greatest hydrologist lol.

[@stylesrj]

We all know he used a Beyblade to part the Red Sea.

[@hedgehog3180]

@@stylesrj A hydrological technique lost to modern engineering.

[@EviGL]

I wonder if Maldives will manage to build these gates all around them. Or are we better off long term if we start building Earth 2 now?

[@theviniso]

I believe they already have a plan to simply buy some land from India and relocate the population there in the future.

[@seanm7445]

Dropping some Island name suggestions: FlashBlock Sanctuary Flood Lock Rock I don’t think MOSElini Isle would go down too well...

[@hambone1991]

A third HAI video in three days???

[@guywithanegg5188]

if this is half as interesting im wondering what fully interesting is just the title peaked my interest

[@D.S.handle]

It’s Wendover Productions. I think he explained this somewhere.

[@xtobias2942]

Actually the island is called: „Isola Artificiale del Baccan di Sant'Erasmo“ translates to „Artificial Island of the Baccan of Sant'Erasmo“

[@Techischannel]

Why not just raise Venice ... just start lifing up the city gradually. Like replacing the foundation poles on which venice is built exept they get longer so venice stays above water even when the sea level rises. On some occasions you just add a few more longer solid poles over the decades, and then continue lifting.

[@infidellic]

Fun fact: Sam's first 4 marriages failed because he was planning for and then away playing "Jet Lag: The Game" too much. His 5th, because he wouldn't stop talking about logistics and his 6th because of his owl fetish

[@Palurien]

Wouldn't 32 cm be closer to the length of two, $1 bills or somewhere between 4 and 5 bills if shown as in the video?

[@killerbee.13]

A dollar bill (and actually all other denominations of US bills) is approximately 6.6cm wide, and 15.5cm long. So basically, it depends which way you rotate it. Edit: oh I think I misread your comment, and also didn't bother to go and check the video again. I agree, the video is wrong when it says 3 dollar bills at 1:28.

[@festerofest4374]

@@killerbee.13 Before I saw these comments I had been measuring a US bill to see for myself.

[@killerbee.13]

@@festerofest4374 That's what I did too

[@Dan-cd6hm]

Visited a flood defence barrier in the Netherlands, the tour guide spent most of the time complaining about how bad the Venice and Saint Petersburg flood defences were

[@Alesxandros]

Tell the guide that mose is working fine and it's 100% italian....durch were barbarians when we lived in city of marble and gold

[@FalconsEye58094]

I still feel like Venice does a better job handling regular floods than NYC does just once in a while

[@carpemkarzi]

That was extremely cool. I didn’t know the details .

[@MabDarogan2]

Moses is better described as fiction's greatest hydrologist

[@amarnathswami1135]

Me increasing my Carbon Footprint deliberately so that Britain and Venice could sink quickly….

[@nyarlathotep6493]

The Honolulu Rail Project see's the 8 Billion price tag and simply says hold my Heineken

[@AuraMaster7]

They should just hire the Dutch to fix it for them

[@davidecasarin4953]

Venice is the bride, sea is the groom.

[@knightsljx]

at this point they should just turn venice into a poulder

[@CyborgRowlet]

Got the Data Time advert!

[@HolographicSweater]

this video has the vibe of a pharmaceutical commercial

[@drpepper3838]

If we were in charge it would be already fixed 50 years ago🤣

[@aidanpeairs1967]

You gotta do a video on the Crédit Mobilier scandal people have been embezzling for centuries

[@MuchWhittering]

Sam, calm down. Your ISP is gonna flag you for all these frequent uploads.

[@Xuebatt]

Captions please, I’m watching this at midnight in my time zone

[@ProfAzimov]

Imagine being 2 ft above the water

[@bradlemmond]

Now imagine being a foot _below_ seawater.

[@stylesrj]

3:40 All those writers and no one ever suggested "Island McIslandFace" as a name?

[@markstevens9405]

I'm not sure you got the ping pong table measurement comparison right. Are you using Imperial or Metric? Appreciate that Americans have difficulties with the latter. Possibly a "redo from start" situation.

[@kyledabearsfan]

I love that he uses our cherished American measurement system of "anything but metric" 😂😂

[@keeganolsen1616]

What is the dimension of the walls in bricks?

[@fastfiddler1625]

Didn't a suspiciously similar person just do a whole video about dams? That, coupled with very not similar people who built a Titanic should be enough of a lesson that humans can't and shouldn't try to outsmart water.

[@EktoHunter]

1:28 im pretty sure the dollar bills should be placed vertically to come out to 32cm, not horizontally

[@EktoHunter]

Actually, according to my Research just now a dollar bill is 15,7cm*6,6cm, so it's either roughly two dollar bills stacked vertically or five dollar bills stacker horizontally

[@houtsmaa]

I don’t understand why they didn’t just get help from the Dutch. They did the exact same thing on an even larger scale, and it works like a charm.

[@Thomas_TdK]

Call in the dutch engineers

[@maruftim]

Ah yes, corruption, what's new?

[@WeyounSix]

Rebuild everything individually on stilts or way higher foundations. It's gonna cost a lot and remove a lot of old buildings, but so will the overtaking of the sea... If you wanna keep living there forever, you're gonna have to do better than a wall.

[@Gamer3427]

Not if you build a bigger wall and turn the city into a city on a lake instead of the sea. Sure you'll have to deal with finding a good way to clean and replace the water, but it is another option.

[@WeyounSix]

Yeah but that option would destroy any natural sealife migration in and out and effectively kill the entire bay for all of the other locations in the area too. I think stilts is better because the majority of Venice is on the land not on an island and im sure they like their sea access and so does the wildlife. Its better for the environment. @@Gamer3427

[@profwaldone]

Nah building a wall will work just fine, we have 70 yr old dykes that have had a constant hight difference of multiple meters for that entire time. It requires maintenance and care but it's definitely a solution. (gotta pump the water around tough)

[@WeyounSix]

@@profwaldone considering it will completely block off the ports and sea access for the other towns AND destroy the ecosystem the cost of upkeep and reroutes of ALL shipping will be prohibitively expensive to keep up.

[@ryanharrigan3655]

New York Islanders jumpscare in the suggested names for the island

[@maxpowr90]

The tide is high but I'm holding on...

[@franzfanz]

Why don't we Parent Trap Venice and the sea?

[@Gulitize]

should just used the money to get the dutch to build deltaworks 2.0

[@Solysis5]

man HAI is pumping videos like CrAzY

[@uplink-on-yt]

328K to lift the barrier? That's about the cost of a steak sold by the 100g in that place. Add a coffee, and it's all covered.

[@CatsT.M]

1:24 Should have said: "When sea levels rise Venice dies".

[@Tuepp]

In the subtitles it's all about Mo's here 😁

[@HxTurtle]

my attempt on naming the unnamed island: "who got the balls telling Sam the entirety of Venice is man-made?"-island

[@coolgeographyandstuff]

Venice and the sea need some relationship counseling. Edit: Sam made the same joke my god lol

[@mmminteresting2440]

Anyone notice how Venice kinda looks like Patrick when he was thirst that one episode?

[@ZACKMAN2007]

They should have gotten the dutch to do the sea wal

[@StefanVeenstra]

Can always plug the holes with engineers if their ideas don't work.

[@Bacon17855]

The Netherland should be taking notes

[@asherjobin9939]

Ofcourse Venice and corruption name a more iconic dou

[@sefii05]

How come you didnt send amy to venice during a flood?

[@thefrub]

It probably would have been cheaper to just jack up the whole city, one building at a time, then pull up the paving stones and rebuild the roads 2m higher

[@theofficialczex1708]

1:29 I don't know how you're lining up those dollar bills, but 10.7 cm is nowhere close to 6.6 cm nor 15.6 cm.

[@Graffititude]

“Malcom Island” …Because it’s in the middle!

[@mittensfastpaw]

And cruise ships make it all worse as well. Yet the government refuses to ban them for short term gains. The cruise ship industry is a plague.

[@Attaxalotl]

Un-sinking Venice is probably the best solution

[@pol9500]

4:23 im guessing the animator doesn’t know what a spritz is 😢

[@mirthenary]

I'd love some piazza right about now, with some green olives and pepp... what? Oh. Nevermind

[@deleted-something]

The ocean is the final boss of venice I guess

[@davidecasarin4953]

there is no ocean in Venice

[@hedgehog3180]

Neptune is taking revenge for using their navy to destroy Constantinople.