How perhaps the water crisis in Agrigento and its surroundings could really be alleviated immediately. From the injunctive decree of Siciliacque, to the “hospital” case, “Il Gattopardo” and the watermaker ship.
First the private company Girgenti Acque purchased water from Siciliacque, and then this was and is also the case for Aica, the public consortium company of the Agrigento municipalities. At the time of 2017 Siciliacque boasted a credit to Marco Campione’s company of over 28 million euros, which was then progressively paid until it was reduced to just over 4 million euros in 2021, as emerged from the half-yearly report signed in June 2022, also because a large part of the debt was included in the bankruptcy of the Girgenti Acque company. Now Siciliacque’s credit has risen again, and the company, which distributes 70 million cubic meters of drinking water to more or less 1,600,000 Sicilians every year, is cashing in, and has sent an injunction of 18 million to the AICA. of euros for unpaid invoices and alleged repeated violations of the repayment plan. AICA is resisting in Court, contesting the provision, deeming it “unmotivated”. Siciliacque has also feared containment measures for the water supply if Aica does not pay, raising the specter of a tap squeeze which currently, in a state of emergency, would prove suffocating and deadly. This is why the prefect of Agrigento, Filippo Romano, raising and brandishing the emergency weapon, recognized by the national government, curbs Siciliacque’s belligerent intentions, ordering them not to fear initiatives that risk even more disturbing public order. And in this potential “disturbance” of public order, the Roman prefect sees a criminal crime, underlining that it would be prosecuted in terms of the law. Therefore: the water emergency in Sicily, and therefore also in the province of Agrigento, has been declared by the national government. The prefect is the first reference and representative of the national government in the Agrigento province. At the very beginning of August 2009, the prefect of Agrigento at the time, Umberto Postiglione, in response to the case of the “weakened concrete” and the orderly eviction by the Prosecutor’s Office of the “San Giovanni di Dio” hospital in Agrigento, therefore turned to the national government. And the Minister of the Interior, Angelino Alfano, and the head of Civil Protection, Guido Bertolaso, descended on the prefecture. And the hospital in Agrigento was placed under the protection and responsibility of the national civil protection, avoiding the eviction. In Agrigento in the short term we would rely on the wells of Bonamorone and via Solferino, the motoape (the “lape”) and the 70 meter hose to supply the huts of the historic center. And in the longer term to the reactivation of the watermaker, guiltily abandoned, and which is the only lifeline, as the mayor Franco Miccichè well understood, who read “Il Gattopardo”, in which Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa writes that in Sicily the sun beats down and stuns the Sicilians for six months from May to October, already relaunching today’s drought emergency in the 21st century in the 19th century. And among the words of the Prince we read: “This climate that inflicts on us six months of fever at forty degrees; count them, Chevalley, count them: May, June, July, August, September, October; six times thirty days of sun overhanging your heads; this summer of ours is as long and gloomy as the Russian winter and against which we fight with less success”. Well and so: if an emergency is and will be – always and even more so due to climate change, and re-embracing the case of the Agrigento hospital – the Roman prefect, like Postiglione, should turn to the national government. And while waiting for the definitive reactivation of the watermaker, at least in a year if they are good, Piantedosi telephones the Minister of the Interior, who then Piantedosi telephones the Minister of Civil Protection, Musumeci, who then Musumeci telephones the Minister of Defense, Crosetto, and who send an army watermaker ship immediately to the coast of Agrigento, taking advantage of the sea-to-land supply and conduction systems that were already built in the early 2000s. Immediately, because it will be worse, and even worse, until October, and who knows: even from November ’24 to April ’25, dry months like they were from November ’23 to April ’24. Filippo Romano and Franco Miccichè: we need to exploit the sea, today with the military ship, tomorrow with the Porto Empedocle plant. Stop.
