Prefect of Taranto and Matera, presidents of the Regions of Puglia and Basilicata and then the heads of the reclamation consortia and the regional departments of Agriculture. These are just some of the recipients of the latest letter registered by the Due Mari Area of Cia-Italian Farmers of Puglia to urgently request a meeting and decisive interventions regarding the age-old issue of water shortage in the fields on the western side of the province of Taranto.
From Ginosa to Palagianello, passing through Castellaneta: Cia Due Mari, through the president Pietro De Padova and the director Vito Rubino, interviewed all the actors involved, each for their own skills, loudly asking for respect for the original agreements between Puglia and Basilicata, both co-owners of the water management of the San Giuliano dam since 1958, and an urgent meeting to deal with the countless critical issues.
With this note – Cia writes – we return to issues that we have reported several times over the years, which have remained unresolved and which promptly recur in all their gravity when the irrigation season starts.
We are talking about the management of the water of the San Giuliano dam (built with public funds) in the province of Matera, for which the former Stornara and Tara Consortium of Taranto has been co-owner since 1958 at 50% with the former Bradano and Metaponto Consortium .
In fact, however, Basilicata has always played a predominant role, since it provided to Puglia only after having satisfied its own needs in the complete immobility and silence of the former management and the current technical structure of the former Stornara and Tara Reclamation Consortium.
This situation has worsened further in recent weeks as over the years Basilicata has modernized its system of drawing water from the San Giuliano dam by creating six sampling points upstream of the San Marco deviation (the only sampling point in Puglia and where there should be a 50% division of the water between Puglia and Basilicata), effectively dumping all the critical issues of water shortage on Puglia alone.
This year – continues Cia – there are further complications due to the lack of winter rainfall which did not favor the replenishment of the dam. This problem worries us and is starting to agitate the minds of farmers: due to real damage to the agricultural economy of the province of Taranto, there are well-founded reasons for danger for public order following the poor supply of water by the managers of the Basilicata reservoirs and of the rising temperature. The territories and companies of the province of Taranto from Ginosa to Palagianello, due to the insufficiency of water supply from the San Giuliano dam, are in great difficulty.
We have reached June 7th, temperatures are starting to increase and the water supplied by the dam so far is very little: we are talking about around 250 liters per second as a daily average. This quantity in the 35 km long adductor canal cannot exceed the Ginosa area, effectively leaving Castellaneta and Palagianello without water. The highly prized tree crops that require a high level of labor, such as vines, citrus fruits, fruit and vegetables, are not receiving the water necessary to avoid fruit drop and to guarantee their growth and the survival of the plants.
We would like to highlight that the use of water should be shared by virtue of the cultivated areas in both territories; in our opinion it is not right that only the territories of the province of Taranto should be affected by the water shortage, since from the information we have in Basilicata water is still supplied regularly.
Having made these necessary premises, we urgently ask all the actors involved, each with their own skills, for a very close meeting, invoking respect for the original agreements and the supply of 50% of the actual water by the Basilicata Consortium. While waiting for the call, given the ongoing emergency, we immediately ask for the supply of at least eight hundred liters per second towards Puglia at the San Marco junction.
“We ask the new commissioner of the Central South Puglia Reclamation Consortium – conclude De Padova and Rubino – to proceed quickly by removing without delay, with strength, courage and determination all the obstacles that have so far prevented, over all these years, from protecting the real interests of Puglia on the water issue. We need to make up for lost time by quickly carrying out all those modernization works as done in Basilicata”.
