Venice rescue plan sunk by Berlusconi

The ability of the Italian state to tackle urgent and glaring problems is being tested as never before. This month in Venice, Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was expected to cut the ribbon on a project said to cost at least €4bn (£2.8bn) to save Venice from flooding.

Nearly 10 years in development, Project Mose involves the building of 79 huge submerged gates at the three inlets to the Venice lagoon, and these will rise hydraulically to bar the abnormal tides that have plagued Italy's exquisite jewel more and more frequently.

But no ribbon will be cut this month. The ceremony has slittata – slipped in time – due, officials say, to Mr Berlusconi's preoccupation with Iraq. Exactly when work will now commence no one is prepared to say.

Everyone agrees that Venice is in desperate trouble. Piazza San Marco, the lowest as well as the most famous spot in the city of canals, now floods dozens of times every year. A complex of factors – including the sinking of the city and the rising of tides due to climate change – has put the very survival of La Serenissima in question. Still alluring to visitors, Venice is becoming less and less popular to live in: the population of the old city has slumped by half in the past 50 years.

Taking big decisions has never been the forte of Italian governments. The weakness of successive coalitions has usually been cited as the problem. Mr Berlusconi, however, has no such excuse: with a large majority in both houses of parliament, his solid centre-right coalition has been described by a supporter as "the first strong Italian government since the war". And the government's commitment to Mose is clear.

In January, the minister for infrastructure and transport, Pietro Lunardi, told parliament: "Thirty-seven years of studies, projects, discussions, political battles over what to do have achieved nothing." But that was all changing, he said. "The works to safeguard Venice have been included among the strategic projects of pre-eminent national importance." Confirming that the first tranche of finance – about €700m – had been approved, he added: "Finally, one of the most significant environmental interventions ever seen in the world will now take shape." But for all Mr Lunardi's fine words, it is not taking shape yet. And as weeks of inactivity grow into months, questions build as to the solidity of the government's dedication to the project.

Doubts about the wisdom of Mose, a scheme comparable to the Thames Barrier but on a far larger scale, have never gone away. The colossal expense is frequently attacked as driven by the desire of the companies involved to make large profits. Paolo Canestrelli, head of Venice's Tidal Forecasting and Early Warning Centre, said that Mose was approved because "the other solutions were too cheap". Giorgio Sarto, an architect and former senator from Venice, blames the fact that the engineering companies that devised the scheme are the same ones that are building it. "It is an immense conflict of interest," he said. "The people doing the work shouldn't be the people planning it."

Undoubtedly the theatrical Mr Berlusconi, Italy's richest man, is devoted to the grand gesture: the other infrastructure scheme to which he is committed, building the world's longest suspension bridge from the toe of Italy across to Sicily, has also been attacked for extravagance and futility, as well as for being risky in a region of frequent earthquakes.

As Italy's economy stagnates, Mose's vast cost looks increasingly daunting. And last week, engineers in Venice launched an alternative plan called Arca. Nicknamed "Mose's little brother" because it uses the same principle of movable gates, Arca, its backers claim, would cost a 20th as much as Mose, and could be built in two years instead of seven. According to Afro Massaro, the engineer responsible to the technical committee for the safeguarding of Venice: "Project Arca would be gradual, experimental and reversible, and also more flexible because it would be possible to adapt its closure according to the volume of the sea."

Yet the arrival of an alternative at this late date also makes one's heart sink: it may give Italy's legislators another 10 years of debating points. "This is not the moment to speak of other projects," said Saverio Centenaro of the governing Forza Italia party, "but to press ahead." He had a point.