Italian council is flooded immediately after rejecting measures on climate change | CNN

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A photographer takes pictures in a flooded St. Mark's Square, in Venice, Italy, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. The high tide reached a peak of 127cm (4.1ft) at 10:35am while an even higher level of 140cm(4.6ft) was predicted for later Tuesday evening. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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Veneto regional council, which is located on Venice’s Grand Canal, was flooded for the first time in its history on Tuesday night – just after it rejected measures to combat climate change.

The historic Italian city has been brought to its knees this week by the worst flooding there in more than 50 years.

And the council chamber in Ferro Fini Palace started to take in water around 10 p.m. local time, as councilors were debating the 2020 regional budget, Democratic Party councilor Andrea Zanoni said in a long Facebook post.

“Ironically, the chamber was flooded two minutes after the majority League, Brothers of Italy, and Forza Italia parties rejected our amendments to tackle climate change,” Zanoni, who is deputy chairman of the environment committee, said in the post, which also has photographs of the room under water.

Among the rejected amendments were measures to fund renewable sources, to replace diesel buses with “more efficient and less polluting ones,” to scrap polluting stoves and reduce the impact of plastics, he said.

Zanoni went on to accuse Veneto regional president Luca Zaia, who is a member of Matteo Salvini’s far-right League Party, of presenting a budget “with no concrete actions to combat climate change.”

The regional council’s spokesman Alessandro Ovizach confirmed to CNN that the council was flooded after discussing amendments to the 2020 budget – without specifying which ones.

The council’s president, the League’s Roberto Ciambetti, rejected Zanoni’s accusations in a statement to CNN.

“Beyond propaganda and deceptive reading, we are voting (for) a regional budget that spent €965 million over the past three years in the fight against air pollution, smog, which is a determining factor in climate change,” said the statement.