“The shortage of water and the distribution of water for a few hours a week has always been a characteristic of Agrigento.”
This is the beginning of the press release signed by Nino Cuffaro, secretary of the Agrigento PD club. The question is: who thirsts for Agrigento?
“In recent months – continues Cuffaro – the situation has worsened and is worsening day by day: the shift period is lengthening and delivery time is decreasing; sometimes, then, the shift is skipped and in some neighborhoods you risk waiting up to two weeks before having water in your homes”.
It is the perfect photo of the current water service. Nino Cuffaro talks about the situation in Agrigento which is identical to Favara or Canicattì, Licata and in almost all the municipalities of the Agrigento area.
“We don’t dare think – says Nino Cuffaro – what could happen in the summer months, with the heat and the water basins below half their usual capacity”.
“Citizens are exasperated and there is also a real risk that in the coming months several commercial activities will have to close due to lack of water”.
The reasons for the water shortage – he continues – cannot be linked only to climate change, which in recent years has led to a continuous increase in temperatures and increasingly scarce rainfall”.
“The serious and worrying factor of global warming does not alone explain the chronic lack of water in the Agrigento area. It also and above all has to do with atavistic administrative inabilities that have created an unsustainable situation. Just think of the 61 water projects in the region rejected last year because they did not comply with the PNRR tenders”.
“If there is little water, holes abound. Sieve networks disperse more than 50% of the water released into our city. A huge waste that we can no longer tolerate. The repairs are delayed, despite the abundance of Aica employees, and the water is lost. The new city water network, promised since 2007 (the year of the privatization of the water service) by deputies, mayors and five regional presidents, recently went up in smoke due to the loss of the 44 million loan due to failure to comply with the terms of use .”
“Therefore, the lack of water cannot be immediately traced back to a natural disaster, but primarily to an insufficient management capacity of the right that administers our city and which has reduced Aica to a personal fiefdom at the service of political needs.”
“The 2025 Italian Capital of Culture event risks showing the world a city with a third world level of services.”
“The people of Agrigento must abandon their atavistic indolence and take charge of their own future: let’s take to the streets to protest. We will do our part – he concludes.”
We have published Nino Cuffaro’s statement in its entirety because, as we were saying, it is the exact analysis of the water service, in an area that is not Norway where droughts are impossible, when two have occurred on our island in the last thirty years and again today we find ourselves unprepared to face them.
