The high temperatures of recent years have dried up the reservoirs, making the water situation far from idyllic. And considering the terms of water availability that Sicily will have to deal with for the near future, with respect to average rainfall, the crisis is starting to become structural. If before we knew that it was raining a certain amount of rainwater, around 700 millimetres, now the figure has changed considerably, down to 400 millimeters of water. A lower quantity of rain corresponds to a lower quantity of water available in artificial reservoirs, a lower recharge of water resources and so on.
Faced with a significant reduction in average rainfall data over the last 10 years, what is the Region doing to strengthen water infrastructure and reverse this harmful trend? The regional Department of Public Utilities Services, led by Roberto Di Mauro, is certainly not sitting idly by.
It is useless to deny that the future is not rosy, there will be unique emergency situations throughout the regional territory and it will not be possible to ensure water for the purposes of irrigating the fields, for production and almost certainly also for the maintenance of the plants. As regards the availability of drinking water, there are areas, especially in the Nisseno and Ennese areas, which depend on two artificial reservoirs which have a particular lack of water, in particular the Fanaco reservoir, where there are already important restrictions in place in terms of supply, approximately 35 percent reduction in the supply of water quantities. A reduction which translates into a form of fairly heavy water rationing and which has been carried out with the aim of prolonging the availability of water within the reservoirs and not leaving the cities dry, waiting for a series of works that are substitutes for the unavailability of water that Sicily is currently experiencing.
The plan is to implement works that are expeditious and many of these are already nearing completion, aimed at identifying new resources to make up for shortcomings. Based on the declaration of the state of emergency and the financing made available by the State which is worth 20 million and which will probably be increased shortly, the Region has put forward a plan of works that can all be carried out quickly from two to 5 months maximum and which are aimed at obtaining water resources that until recently were not used or were not available.
At the same time, the regional department has planned other works based on the resources made available, providing for interventions to improve the dams and completely fill them And also scheduled new watermakers, at this time the only water resource that we certainly possess and which must be fully exploited for the upcoming summer season and for those to come, if we think that Sicily will have to deal with the continuing absence of rain in the future too and the strategy must necessarily change.
The Region has planned three plants to be placed in the traditional sites of Trapani, Gela and Porto Empedocle. Areas where other plants were located which today no longer have any reason to exist because they had a setup that could have been fine 30 years ago, with significant management costs and which in any case are not suitable today, considering that the average life of a watermaker is 10 years. But the point always remains one: what funds are available?
We are in the closing phase of the 2021-2027 programming, the FSC funds are in the field, then the Pr FESR 2021-27, the complementary operational plan. Economic plans that certainly offer important figures. However, in terms of numbers we are still a long way from what would be necessary to ensure the true definitive resolution of the problem, or the widespread elimination of losses on our water distribution network due to infrastructures that are very old and which compromise the use of water resources: approximately 50% of this is lost underground. Over time, many investments have been made, but given the dilapidation of the infrastructure, the resources spent, although many, were not enough to solve the problem and guarantee the ordinary. In Sicily, for the distribution network alone, around 8 billion euros would be needed to combat the water crisis and guarantee the population’s supply. But there is a lack of financial availability, just as there is a lack of time.
Even the management model of the service carried out by the municipalities has not paid off. In areas where there is no manager, governance is deficient. Municipalities will hardly be able to manage the emergency in optimal terms, difficulties linked to budgetary problems and those of tax collection. What is different is the management entrusted.
Going into the merits of the organization of water management services, the configuration of the integrated water service (SII) in Sicily organizes the aqueduct service into two segments: the Super-area, made up of the large infrastructures for the supply and transport of water resources, supplied “wholesale” to users located in different areas. Then there they are the nine optimal territorial areas (Ati), coinciding with the administrative limits of the nine Sicilian provinces and which manage supplies at a provincial or municipal scale.
The water services managed by the Water and Waste Department do not end here, in fact they also concern almost all of the Sicilian dams. In particular, Viale Campania manages the integrated water service as a direct management activity of coordination and control of the provincial bodies, namely the Ati, i.e. regulatory bodies that entrust the integrated water service on a provincial basis. In Sicily there is also a further management company, Siciliaque, which has a contractual relationship with the Region and which carries out an activity superior to that of the integrated water service managers.
Howeverfrom the governance point of view the integrated water service is not yet completein fact there are three pockets namely the Provinces of Messina, Syracuse and Trapani where there is still no integrated water service manager. These three provinces were placed under commissionership with the application of a 2022 law decree which provided for deadlines for the reliability of the water service. Once the deadlines expired, the Region was automatically placed under commissionership. The tenders for the assignments have been held in Messina and Syracuse. In particular, in Syracuse we are close to being awarded and in Messina the submission of offers will expire at the end of June. Trapani, however, still has difficulties and the situation is more controversial. The competitions are held on the basis of a planning document, the Area Plan which includes all the works that must necessarily be carried out and the situation in terms of water availability. Within the same document there is a financial economic plan, the tool with which the so-called occurs economic sustainability of the plan to proceed with the tender for the assignment. In order to be implemented, an area plan must be bankable, and Trapani’s plan did not have an adequate economic plan. Which is why in that province the territorial water assembly is reviewing the plan as much as possible, probably reducing the planned investments, otherwise it will be impossible to have the plan bankable and thus allow the tender procedures to start.
As regards the management entrusted, at the moment Sicily has six: there are consolidated ones, especially in Enna and Caltanissetta, another more or less consolidated is that of Palermo. The Sicilian capital makes use of Amap which represents a manager rooted in the territory, the Palermo network alone is worth around 70% of the entire province. It is clear that the infrastructural panorama can and must improve, especially with regards to purification. However, there are also contexts in which a lot has been done for reduction of water dispersion. Important work was carried out in Enna where the water resource loss regime was reduced by over 50 percent compared to what occurred at the beginning. A work whose epilogue has resulted in less water dispersion, in lower costs for water supply, in greater guarantees regarding the quality of the water itself supplied to citizens, and above all in the guarantee of continuity of service in the Province of Enna. This does not mean that the interventions to be done end here, especially with regards to purification. Sicily is subject to a system of community infringement procedures that spares almost none of the 391 municipalities. Around 250 of these are subject to infringement proceedings. The national commissioner, who has responsibilities for purification in Sicily, is operating amidst a series of difficulties because he has inherited a quantity of works to be carried out at quite onerous costs, and the works program costs 2 and a half billion euros.
