The ridiculous ways in which local, regional and national institutions
are dealing with the drought drama in Sicily say a lot about the idiocyin power, certainly, but also about how an accustomed and stunned
population can continue to accept such outrages, if the flame of revolt
is not ignited more and more widely. ---- Although the water crisis has
been ongoing since 2023, in almost a year of time we have continued to
approach the problem of the absence of rain in the same way as we do
with everything else: without undermining the structures that for years,
for decades, have forced people to thirst. The so-called emergency,
foreseen and indicated by scientific studies and newspaper articles, is
once again the provision of ineffective measures and stopgap solutions
that go from top to bottom, whose main purpose remains that of
guaranteeing the exercise of power.
Let's take for example one of the first measures implemented by the
Sicilian Region in January of this year, namely the rationing of
drinking water between 10 and 45% in many municipalities. Starting from
the province of Palermo, the measure was then extended to the Trapani,
Agrigento and Nisseno areas, involving approximately one million people.
Simple, right? What else could have been done? Instead of preparing
structural interventions on problems that have been known for some time,
and about which we wrote in the last issue of Sicilia Libertaria, we
intervened at the source, taking water away from innocent citizens,
rather than intervening at the source. Was it necessary to act
immediately? Why not act on the illegal connections or on the waste of
agricultural companies and rich people with their swimming pools or,
better yet, on the confiscation of dams managed by private individuals?
One example among many: only in mid-August did they decide to use the
water from the Ragoleto reservoir, mostly managed by Eni, for the
agricultural lands of Ragusa, allocating it to the related land
reclamation consortium of eastern Sicily. Even during this year's water
crisis, and more generally since the 1960s, they continued to prefer
that Eni use mostly drinkable water for its industrial purposes inside
the former Gela refinery, which is over 50 kilometers away. Can't a
company that has made over 40 billion euros in profits over the last
three years pay for a few tankers? No, it's better that ordinary people
pay for the tankers, who for months have been subjected to the double
bloodletting, and the consequent mockery, of public supply (which
doesn't exist) and private supply. And so, in this torrid summer drained
of protests, we witnessed a pathetic scene at the end of July, the
arrival of an enormous tanker, owned by the navy, with a load of 1,200
cubic meters of water that, the Region wrote, were "intended to mitigate
the effects of the water crisis in the Agrigento and Gela area".
However, in addition to yet another militarization of a crisis, the move
proved harmful for the propaganda itself because a handful of days later
in cities like Licata and Gela the distribution on alternate days has
already returned, showing once again the uselessness of the armed
forces, especially when they are assigned civil protection functions.
Meanwhile, the institutions, always ready to take credit for things they
don't have and to overestimate their impact on the lives of all of us,
have staged the most classic and disgusting of buck-passing. The last
one occurred at the beginning of August. M5S MP Giuseppe Antoci had
submitted an urgent question to the European Commission, requesting the
activation of the European Solidarity Fund. The one who responded to him
was the Commissioner for Cohesion, Elisa Ferreira, who pointed out that
"as of August 6, 2024, Italy had not activated the Fund to address the
situation in Sicily" and that, if desired, one could also resort to the
quotas of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Life program. They are
all right, and therefore they are all wrong. A few days pass and on
August 29, the Region triumphantly announces that "40 million euros are
ready to support Sicilian agricultural businesses affected by drought".
What timing! The money is "ready", therefore not yet allocated, and it
still took months and months to find the first funds.
In the meantime, in the period from January 1 to May 31, 2024, the most
delicate one because it is the one of sowing, it was calculated that the
damage to agricultural production due to the lack of water was
approximately 313 million euros, equal to approximately 74% of ordinary
production. Damage to production was estimated at 60% on legumes, 70% on
cereals and 80% on fodder; in some cases in the Madonie the reported
damage was 100%. Faced with such a tragedy, because a Sicily without
water or food is simply a Sicily without a future, what was the most
debated topic in the newspapers? But tourism, obviously. With the hotel
associations that at the beginning of the season lined up against the
newspapers, guilty of reporting the reality and thus driving away the
arrivals of rivers of people who did nothing but increase the
inconvenience. Arrivals that have occurred, and in abundance, because
the extractivist model of mass tourism does not look anyone in the face.
What emerges from this endless summer is that in the face of the rain of
idiocies from the powers that be, a collective and popular response has
so far been lacking. Everyone is trying to save themselves: there are
those who install yet another water tank, those who are focusing on
tropical crops such as bananas, mangoes and coffee (and which, however,
net of the high temperatures, still need considerable quantities of
water), those who dig wells, those who organize spontaneous committees,
those who try to program and plan the reconversion of entire sectors. It
will take years before the island can recover. In the meantime, however,
we need to get back to organizing together, overturning the priorities
identified so far (such as desalination plants) and demanding, beyond
small-scale interventions (necessary anyway), solutions that start from
a fact, that is, the irreversibility of climate change, which in turn
must become the means for a new season of struggle, so that access to
water, that is, the most precious good, can become the tool to
decentralize its management and fight against its privatization. There
is no more vital resource, there is no more vital struggle.
Andrea Turco
http://sicilialibertaria.it
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