On the one hand, the municipality throws away 4 liters of water per second to repair a fault. On the other hand, the administration applies new bans to citizens, and those who waste water risk paying up to 500 euros in fines.
It’s the paradox of Trapani, a city that has a complicated relationship with water resources. The drought emergency is putting citizens in even greater difficulty as they are constantly dealing with continuous network failures and weeping taps.
Precisely to repair one of these faults, approximately 4 liters per second of water have been spilled for days on the construction site which, months ago, was the subject of repairs to a leak that had left thousands of people stranded for weeks. In essence, to once again repair the leaks in the Bresciana network, 50 km from the city, water is spilled.
For the Tranchida administration there is no other solution.
In the meantime, the mayor says he wants to save over 20 thousand liters of water a year. And he issued an ordinance that imposes a series of bans on citizens (we talked about it here).
A huge paradox, in short, while the drought emergency risks having dramatic consequences for the summer. There has been some relief in the last two days. In Sicily it rained, and also consistently and with the right intensity so as not to cause damage and to allow the entire region to be “irrigated”.
However, it is not enough to replenish the aquifers and reservoirs that come from a very dry winter.
Urgent interventions are needed to deal with the water crisis. In recent days, the Council of Ministers accepted the documentation presented by the Region and decided on a national state of emergency due to the drought in Sicily. 20 million euros will arrive from Rome for immediate interventions. Among these, the Region has planned the purchase of tankers in the affected municipalities, the maintenance of vehicles in hundreds of local authorities, and over 130 interventions to regenerate wells, drill new wells and reactivate abandoned ones. In addition, the upgrading of pumping plants and pipelines is planned, as well as the construction of new interconnection and bypass pipelines. The 20 million euros are few. But the MIT has reshaped the funds with 113.5 million euros for Sicily coming soon, as foreseen by the directorial decree of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport which allocates 1 billion euros for our country for the reduction of losses in water distribution networks and for their digitalisation and monitoring. “This intervention will significantly reduce the waste of drinking water while modernizing the distribution networks.” says the Undersecretary of Labor Claudio Durigon, coordinator of the League in Sicily, in an official note.
However, there is nothing to be done at the moment for the restructuring and restarting of the watermakers Porto Empedocle and Trapani. These are “operations that will require longer times and tender procedures, as there are no substantial exceptions in environmental matters and procurement above the community threshold” the Region announced.
And precisely on the Trapani watermaker, rather than being postponed, it would be a real failure. An enormous disused structure, abandoned for over 10 years, and now in need of dismantling. “The only things to save from that watermaker, perhaps, are the connections to the water network and the sea-going experience”. The engineer says so Giuseppe Campagna, which leads Sofip, a company which in joint venture together with the Spanish companies Acciona and Protecno have built the watermakers in Lampedusa, Linosa and Pantelleria in recent years. Three islands which since 2015 have had the most modern systems built up to this point which allow them not to suffer from the drought emergency. “We supply water every day to the municipalities of the Islands without any interruption,” explains Campagna. Systems created thanks to a European tender announced by the Region.
“Plants of a certain size need materials that come from China. And we will have to wait. The problem is that you have to get through the summer. The technology of the Trapani watermaker was good 30 years ago, today it has to be thrown away. The costs would be enormous to get that structure back into operation.” In fact, Campagna explains that not only is the technology obsolete but the costs would be so high for both maintenance and operation that the only solution is to dismantle the old watermaker to build a new one with energy efficiency systems. However, it cannot be an intervention that is done overnight, it takes time, especially when the public is involved.
The great thirst of Trapani. What happened to the watermaker from Tp24 on Vimeo.
Meanwhile, a bad gaffe by the Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida in the Senate: “Fortunately this year the drought has hit some areas of the South and Sicily in particular”. The gaffe of the minister and brother-in-law of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni took place in the afternoon in the Senate chamber where the usual session dedicated to “Question time” was scheduled, the immediate live TV responses of government representatives to the senators’ questions.
