Lake Cleanup: Sinking of Old Pontoon Facilitates Navigarda Operations
The old pontoon Tenace has finally given up and lies at a depth of about twenty meters beneath the lake’s surface, between Punta Lido and the Fraglia pier. The operation was completed yesterday morning with a significant deployment of resources and was accompanied by an unforeseen and somewhat unpleasant complication: the floating dock that extended about twenty meters into the lake from the Lido ice cream shop was damaged and will require divers to restore its usual functionality.
The intended outcome was nonetheless achieved: Navigarda will be able to reuse the pier at Lido, constructed in the early seventies, for mooring boats and ferries overnight, thereby freeing the pontile on Lungolago D’Annunzio, near the power station.
State and history of the pontoon
The Tenace pontoon, an old pride of the Rossi technical institute in Porto S. Nicolò, was reconverted for the Fiaba night event. Now moored and completely unusable at the Lido, and neglected in maintenance, it tilted and settled onto the lakebed a few meters from the shore. It became a problem when Navigarda started blocking the lake outlet of material extracted from the tunnel, claiming they could not do without the backup pontile, located under the power station.
The pontile is almost always unused, but the navigation company refuses to abandon it: they want it back at any cost. To bypass this obstacle, the province and the municipality decided to clear the Lido dock, removing the Tenace. Ultimately, since the weight of the water-filled floats made any recovery impossible (it could weigh around a thousand quintals), it was decided to sink it.
Sinking operations and consequences
Yesterday morning, supported by the Vigili del Fuoco patrol boat, two divers entered the water and attached sturdy steel cables to the semi-submerged wreck. On the other side, the Tonale, the largest ferry in the Navigarda fleet, exerted full power with its engines to drag the wreck about thirty meters offshore, enough to definitively erase it from the face of the earth.
The mishap occurred during this phase. While Tonale pulled at maximum force, the underwater tow became snagged on the cables holding the pontile for sailing boats to the bottom. The cables broke, causing the second half of the pontile to detach and drift away on its own, rise to the surface, and then, bent in two, settle semi-submerged.
The council hopes that with the Lido dock, Navigarda will stop placing poles between the wheels, hindering the lake’s outlet. Furthermore, for the company, the landslide and closure of 45 bis is a real boon: all transports, personnel, and equipment are abundantly paid.
