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On a sunny morning on the banks of the Adda River in northern Italy, school children on a class trip to Imbersago – “Leonardo da Vinci’s Ferry Town” – gathered next to a moored boat and listened as a guide explained how the river birds fly, the rock formations and the way the ship worked inspired Leonardo’s genius.
“Why aren’t you moving?” one of the students interrupted, pointing to the ferry, which was behind a chain and a sign that said, “Service suspended.” It looks like a quiet summer deck above two rowboats.
“The water must be high enough for the current to move,” answered Sara Asperti, 45 years old. So if anyone is interested.”
Since at least 500 years ago, when the cliffs of the Adda belonged to the Duchy of Milan and the Republic of Venice, ferries have run on the water currents and ropes stretched across the narrow river. Leonardo spent a lot of time in the area and sketched a ferry without a motor around 1513. Later, the invention of the ferry, or the improvement of it, was attributed to him, although none of the locals knew about it.
In the last century, a reproduction of the original ferry has connected the Provinces of Lecco and Bergamo in Italy, allowing woolen factory workers to commute, the young Pope John XXIII to visit his favorite shrines and, more recently, tourists and cyclists to enjoy the natural and yellow road. rapeseed field.
But a year after Italy’s worst drought in seven decades – while much of Europe felt the rain – a winter without rain or snow has turned into a dry spring in the north of the country. In Piedmont, water tanks already supply drinking water to small mountain villages. The Po River Valley, usually fertile and rich in rice, is dry. In March, members of Parliament brandished river stones collected from the dry Adige River to accuse Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of inaction.
“I am not Moses,” he replied.
This month, the government created a task force to deal with the lack of rainfall, which also hit Adda, where swans jumped in water so low that islands appeared, rowing boats were thrown away and the last thing the city called a “Leonardesque” ferry. has become a stationary landmark.
“If it becomes a monument, or static, it will lose its meaning,” said Fabio Vergani, the mayor of Imbersago, as he sat on the ferry, big enough to accommodate three cars or several people, but now empty. The boat is a tourist draw and an economic engine, he said, but more importantly, it is “the jewel of the city’s family – we can’t be left without it.”
The case of the sick ferry, the mayor said, is “evidence of a global problem.” He continued: “It is not science fiction. We feel the real effects. What is a problem in North Africa can become a reality in southern Europe. The lack of rain and the desertification of the region.
But some townspeople say Italy’s more pressing problems than climate change are the real cause of the ferry’s immobility since May.
“Bureaucrats,” said John Codara, who owns a gelato shop next to the ferry.
Since the last ferry operator left to run another lucrative water taxi on Lake Como, no one has bid to take over the concession of 4,500 euros-a-year, although the city has thrown in mountain bike rentals as a deal sweetener.
The mayor said that no one wanted to operate the ferry because it could not run with the weak current, and tried to explain a lot to Mr. Codara in his cafe. But the gelato maker didn’t buy it. After the mayor left, Mr. Codara, who took a call from an interested citizen — “You should see this guy’s hair,” he said, hanging up — remained confident that the ferry’s engineering could handle the low water.
“I mean Leonardo is not an idiot,” he said, under a picture of Leonardo. He showed how the ferry works in a small wooden model made by a local pensioner – “It’s for size; it’s worth 500 euros,” or almost $ 550, and supports the low water and weak current obviously the operator needed elbow grease to move through the cable connecting the two banks -bank.
“The strength of this ferry,” said Mr. Codara, pointing to his biceps.
What he didn’t need was an advanced nautical degree, he said, as he left the cafe and made a sign honoring “The Human Face of the Ferry” and the pilots of the past century. “Harvard, Harvard, Harvard,” said Mr. Codara, pointing at the names. “They all went to Harvard.”
Roberto Spada, 75, whose father is one of the ferrymen, said he helped navigate the ferry as a 12-year-old and is interested in helping out the city by doing it again as a volunteer.
“I think with a license, I can do it,” Mr. Spada told the mayor as they leaned against another sign posted next to the ferry featuring a Leonardo sketch and a quote from Dante’s “Inferno” about Charon, .”
A retired truck driver and president of the local fishermen’s association – which has a ferry as its logo – Mr Spada has a boating license but looked confused as the mayor explained all the certificates and bureaucracy he had to go through for pilots. ferry.
“It’s a very long process,” said Mr. Vergani, the mayor.
In the meantime, the river is at one of its deepest levels in decades.
A volunteer tending the riverside flower bed found the dirt too dry, so he put down a hoe and used a leaf blower to clear it. Cyclists walk over the chain, their bicycle shoes clicking on the wood of the ferry platform, to commiserate about the lower level of the river. One of them, 63-year-old Roberto Valsecchi, who remembers crossing a car on the ferry when he was young, worries that the snowfall on the ski slopes this winter means “we’re going to suffer this summer.”
Mr. Vergani is worried that even if the skies open, officials at Lake Como, which feeds the river, will hide the water and “keep it closed” to ensure the safety of the lake. The situation looks bleak. Hydroelectric plants in the area have already started printing water.
Giuseppina Di Paola, 64, took a break from feeding the geese to talk about how she took her mountain bike on the ferry, but now walked along the shore, where “I found a lot of dead fish.”
Flavio Besana, 70, a local park ranger, spent the day walking the centuries-old path along the river. He pointed out the rocks he considered to be the inspiration for the landscape in Leonardo’s “Virgin of the Rocks”.
“Everything is usually sprinkled with water,” Mr. Besana said pointing to the bottom of the rock. “In 40 years, I’ve never seen a river like this.”
Near the center of the small town of Imbersago, the roundabout is decorated with a large wooden ferry model. The loss of major attractions means weekday tourism has slowed. Valentino Riva, 66, whose father was a ferryman in the 1970s, irons clothes at a dry cleaner in the square and remembers happier days.
“There used to be someone in the piazza,” he said, as the iron hissed. “That time is over.”
Evening fell and the light breeze of the day died down, leaving the river still like a pit. Across the water, on the Bergamo side, Angela Maestroni, 64, sits with her husband next to Leonardo da Vinci Street and in front of a small harbor where there are no longer ferries. He remembers traveling on the ferry, watching birds and worrying about the future.
“It hasn’t rained in months,” he said. “Summer is getting hotter. Last year, the sun burned everything.”
Just then, a drizzle of light fell from the sky, blowing across the river and revealing a wooden ferryboat on the other side of the beach. Then, just as suddenly, it stopped and the sky cleared.
“It’s two drops,” she said. “Inadequate.”
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