The marble pebbles even weighing one kilo, with which the municipal administration has replaced the sand of the beaches during thunderstorms fly against the houses of the inhabited center.

The marble beaches of Marina di Pisa. Look at the pictures Photo

In Marina di Pisa the stones fly. The storm surges shoot the marble pebbles up to a kilo in weight, with which the municipal administration has replaced the sand of the beaches in front of the town. A solution designed to counter the strong process of erosion of the beaches south of the mouth of the Arno river, after other interventions to defend the coast - such as detached cliffs and breakwaters - had proved ineffective. To the point that in a few decades the beaches of the seafront, from which they were 300 meters deep, have narrowed to a strip wide in some places just about ten meters. Photo

VERSILIA DEFLOWS ME - The Versilia area tends to decline, explains Professor Giovanni Sarti, who heads the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Pisa. But to accentuate the phenomenon is the strong anthropogenic pressure due to summer tourism: with the emptying of the water tables, which behave like sponges, the soil sinks. To this decrease, of the order of 3 millimeters per year, was added the rise in sea level caused by climate change: another 3 millimeters per year. The massive reduction of sediments carried by the Arno due to the dams then accelerated this retreat of the coast: so that on the right bank of the river delta, the embankment has retreated by more than a kilometer.

MALTEMPO LAUNCHES STONES - Also to protect the town of Marina di Pisa, in the early 2000s the sand was replaced by gravel obtained from the waste from the Carrara marble quarries. But it was too light and was quickly swept away by the currents. Hence the idea of ​​using heavier pebbles, even 15 centimeters in diameter, with which five beaches were paved, the last of which in 2016. At the time, the extreme events caused by the warming of the sea, such as hurricanes and trumpets air, were still rare in our latitudes. Not anymore, so when a stormy wind blows like recently, the houses along the seafront are bombarded with bursts of marble bullets, and the coastal road is covered with piles of stones up to three meters high. Another unexpected effect of climate change, which involves continuous maintenance (and spending) by the local administration.

Sandro OrlandoSource: oggi.it