press release from the Italian Left signed by the provincial secretary Gioli Vindigni and the city secretary Marcello Failla.
Almost a year after the drama of July 2023, the city of Catania risks a new, prolonged electricity blackout this summer too.
Last year, in fact, in the month of July, a large part of the city of Catania and the metropolitan area were affected by an electricity supply crisis which caused the interruption of service for dozens of days in many areas of the city. city and hinterland.
The interruption of the electricity network also caused a serious water crisis, which affected at least a quarter of the inhabitants of the city of Catania for a few weeks.
This Enel outage occurred due to the serious age of the electrical infrastructure in the metropolitan area of Catania, which was under severe stress due to the increase in temperature. E-Distribuzione itself communicated the technical causes of the crisis, due to the fragility of the medium and low intensity electricity grid, which could not withstand the temperatures reached by the asphalt, which well exceeded 50°C. This also prevented water distribution systems from working.
The disservice was even more accentuated due to the significant reduction in Enel’s staff, so much so that Sicily is first in Italy for the number of breakdowns on electricity lines.
For some years, Enel has reduced investments in the South and in particular in the Sicilian territory, gradually cutting its workforce. In recent months the company has not taken steps to upgrade the network and therefore the probability is very high that high temperatures will be recorded in the upcoming summer and that the electrical infrastructures will be subject to the same kind of stress as last year.
Already in the autumn Enel had announced the allocation of 412 million euros to be allocated to the modernization of the Catania electricity infrastructure, but so far no plan has been prepared to upgrade the electricity lines of the Catania metropolitan area, despite the huge funding from the PNRR for investments in infrastructure.
The city of Catania cannot once again suffer a dramatic energy and water supply crisis like last summer. Even in third world countries, important infrastructures that are so old and inadequate for contemporary climate conditions are not modernized.
The Italian Left denounces the serious danger of a new blackout, will present a parliamentary question to the government to intervene to prevent any inconvenience to the citizens, will ask for a meeting with the prefect of Catania in this regard and will mobilize the citizens so that the disruptions suffered last summer.
