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  3. Water Supply in Venice P1: The city of Venice stretches across a group of 117 small islands that are separated by canals and lin

Water Supply in Venice P1: The city of Venice stretches across a group of 117 small islands that are separated by canals and lin

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问题 Water Supply in Venice
P1: The city of Venice stretches across a group of 117 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by bridges. These are located in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay that lies between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers. Although it is built on saltwater marshes and crisscrossed by canals, Venice has experienced problems with its water supply for most of its history. One fifteenth-century French traveler even remarked that "in a city" in which the inhabitants are "in water up to their mouths, they often go thirsty." How was the community to solve this important problem?
P2: During the Neolithic Age (5,700 -2,800 BC), the first successful efforts to control the flow of water were driven by agricultural needs: urban hydraulic systems came later, in the Bronze Age (2,800-1,100 BC). Water drawn from the lagoon and the canals within the city supplied not only domestic demand but also a system of private baths and a great bath for public use. The inventories of even the most modest households listed large numbers of buckets, which were regularly emptied and rinsed, with some used to carry the brackish canal water and others set aside for fresh water. Still, even serving such basic needs would have been impossible if the canals of Venice had been too polluted. For this reason, the government was obliged to impose controls, and in the early fourteenth century, the Great Council prohibited the washing of all cloth and dyed woolens, and banned water used for dyeing from being flushed into the canals. Henceforth, dirty water of that sort was to go into the lagoon. Due to resistance on the part of the dyers, infractions were many. However, a century later, most of the dye works that used blood or indigo (a dark blue dye) had shifted to the periphery of the city, as had all activities "that let off bad odors or smells," such as butchering. Blood, carcasses, and spoiled meat were to go into the lagoon. The canals of Venice began to be protected in the name of nascent ecological awareness.
P3: Throughout the ninth century, peninsula water purity was a pressing concern. "Brackish" water appalled diplomats during their travels as much as it does to modern tourists; clearly water quality became important to drinkers in Italy. Unlike wells on the nearby coastal region, vulnerable in insecure and bellicose times and orphaned by generous patrons, cisterns were an excellent system of water supply for uneasy society. With the increase in population density, cisterns became necessary. Basically, the cisterns were large, covered pits dug into the ground and lined with clay to hold water. The cisterns were located in the city, but unlike the wells, the cisterns were not supplied with water from the lagoon—they collected rainwater instead. On hilltops, where the groundwater was tainted by salt, cisterns were especially preferred. They were more widespread than wells in the growing cities of Italy.
P4: Over a period of several hundred years, Venice developed an elaborate system of cisterns and gome—the gutters or pipes that carried rainwater to the cisterns and that, for a single cistern, might extend over an area of several streets. Wealthy households had their own cisterns. In less affluent areas of the city, cisterns were often owned and maintained by neighborhood groups. In crowded parts of the city where landlords offered small houses for rent, one or two cisterns were provided for each street. A network of public cisterns paralleled these private and semiprivate arrangements. Every public square in the city had a cistern to serve the poorest Venetians.
P5: In the beginning of the thirteenth century, there were already a hundred cisterns in the city. A decision was later made to create 50 additional ones, primarily in the recently urbanized area at the edge of the city. At the same time, a campaign was launched to repair the existing cisterns. Expansion of the cistern system stopped during much of the fourteenth century as Venice, like other cities in Europe, suffered from bubonic plague. In order to reinforce the number of cisterns, various measures were taken. For example, religious bodies that decided to build cisterns inside the monasteries were largely subsidized by the state as long as the cisterns were left free to use for all citizens. Surveillance measures were adopted to avoid waste in consumption: the parish priests held the keys of the cisterns with the task of opening them only twice a day, at the sound of the "bell wells." There were also cisterns dedicated only to poor people, such as the San Marcuola cistern.
P6: The steady increase in population and commerce determined such a consumption of water that the cisterns were no longer sufficient. In spite of the expansion of the cistern system, Venice continued to have problems with its water supply, especially during dry periods. Flotillas of boats had to be dispatched to the mouths of nearby rivers— first to the Bottenigo, then to the Brenta—to fetch fresh water. The fresh water was then sold by the bucket or poured into the cisterns. The public authorities made efforts to decree the creation of new canals to ensure the supply of fresh water from a parallel source, and a number of even bolder actions were suggested during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to channel river water. However, the high cost of such initiatives precluded their execution.
P4: Over a period of several hundred years, Venice developed an elaborate system of cisterns and gome—the gutters or pipes that carried rainwater to the cisterns and that, for a single cistern, might extend over an area of several streets. Wealthy households had their own cisterns.■ In less affluent areas of the city, cisterns were often owned and maintained by neighborhood groups. ■ In crowded parts of the city where landlords offered small houses for rent, one or two cisterns were provided for each street. ■ A network of public cisterns paralleled these private and semiprivate arrangements. Every public square in the city had a cistern to serve the poorest Venetians.■
The word "ensure" in the passage is closest in meaning to
选项 A、improve
B、increase
C、control
D、guarantee
答案D
解析 【词汇题】ensure意为“确保”。
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