The Leaning Tower

In Venice, hydrological officials were figures second only to the Doge. What they said was the law of the lagoon. Since 1501, the Republic of Venice had mobilized every resource and technology at its disposal to maintain the lagoon's ecological balance.

Now, because of the construction needs of the Moses Project, the mayor had assigned this department to the New Venice Group to assist them in completing the dam.

Publicly, the Moses Project was said to separate Venice from the Adriatic Sea, ensuring that floods would no longer continue to ravage the city. Yet MACUSA had just told Pomona that rainfall was the problem, much as she had called herself Mrs. Prince without saying that she was Linda Smith.

Pomona had no hope of accessing hydrological records from recent decades, but this forgotten library contained materials left behind by the former Venice Water Management Council. Perhaps Napoleon had believed these hydrological records had nothing to do with the whereabouts of the Knights Templar.

From the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, when the Brenta River, Sile River, and Piave River carried huge quantities of silt that threatened Venice, hydrological officials ordered all three rivers rerouted.

As a result, less silt flowed into Venice, but there was also less water. Italy had a Mediterranean climate, whose defining trait could be summed up simply: little rain during hot periods and plenty during cold ones. During Venice's 1966 flooding, the sea level rose 200 centimeters above the Adriatic Sea. In other words, the Moses Project, which had cost 4.5 billion euros, could not solve Venice's flooding problem.

Any housewife who had washed vegetables knew that if leaves clogged the drain, wastewater drained very slowly. If water kept pouring in, it would keep accumulating. That was why kitchen garbage disposals existed: to ensure the pipes