The Council of Ministers has declared a state of national emergency for the island, where rainfall has halved and 670 million cubic meters of water are missing from the reservoirs
[8 Maggio 2024]
As requested a month ago by the Regional Council, the Meloni Government declared a national state of emergency due to the drought in Sicily.
The emergency has a horizon of 12 months and – as explained by the Region – provides for the allocation of the “first 20 million euros, with the possibility of increasing resources in a short time already during the implementation of the first interventions”.
This is an amount 6.5 times less than the resources that Sicily has estimated as necessary for short-term actions against drought, and about 30 times less than those estimated in the medium term.
The solutions proposed by the control room, led by the governor and coordinated by the head of the regional civil protection, are differentiated based on the implementation times.
Among those quickly implemented, the purchase of new tankers in municipalities in crisis and the arrangement of other vehicles in around a hundred local authorities; approximately 130 interventions including regeneration of existing wells, drilling of twin wells and reactivation of abandoned ones, in addition to the revamping of around thirty springs; the strengthening of pumping systems and pipelines; the construction of new interconnection and bypass pipelines.
For the next few months, however, we are evaluating the restructuring and restarting of the desalination plants of Porto Empedocle, in the Agrigento area, and of Trapani, operations that will require longer times and tender procedures, as there are no substantial exceptions in environmental and procurement matters above the community threshold.
At the same time, the regional Civil Protection department has established nine technical tables in the Civil Engineering offices of the capitals of each province, with representatives of the Water Department, the Reclamation Consortia, and the Basin Authority.
The problem underlying the drought affecting Sicily remains to be addressed, i.e. the ongoing climate crisis mainly due to the use of fossil fuels such as gas, oil and coal. Already today, the damage linked to climate change exceeds the cost of the investments necessary for the ecological transition by 6 times.
