As things currently stand, about 40% of the Sicilian population is at
risk of thirst: 2 million inhabitants, with the epicenter in theprovinces of Agrigento, Caltanissetta and Enna, and suffering spread
everywhere. October began with a supply of 60 million cubic meters of
water compared to 300 a year ago. If things continue like this, in
January the artificial basins will be dry; today 9 out of 29 are already
dry, 10 have less than 1 million cubic meters, the remaining less than 5
million. A dam like the Ancipa, on the Nebrodi, has only 2 million cubic
meters out of 30, without considering that all the dams have bottoms
overflowing with mud.
In recent days, the interruption of the supply in the Agrigento area for
40 days has been announced; in the Nisseno area it ranges from 8 days,
to 2 months, to 100 days, depending on the area. Palermo has launched a
plan for a one-day weekly shutdown for some neighborhoods: a real luxury.
Tankers are the masters; private ones can be found but at a high price,
but the water is not always controlled. The search for abandoned wells
reveals contaminated or brackish water. The owners of private wells do
business, the announced expropriations are slow in coming. The bills,
however, are not slow in coming, raining down on taxpayers as if it were
a normal situation.
The region has launched a silo plan to be installed in the squares of
thirsty towns, while it rediscovers the desalination plants of Porto
Empedocle, Gela and Trapani to start them up, which it will spend 100
million within a year with extraordinary procedures, even knowing that
this is a partial and late solution.
The regional government is moving in an emergency perspective, which
involves uncontrolled spending, hasty works, lack of planning, waste and
corruption. In 1989-90 Sicily found itself in a similar situation, there
was a lot of talk, then nothing. In the meantime the climate crisis has
worsened, it hasn't rained for months and months, and we are still stuck
with the old abandoned desalination plant, the tankers, the rationing,
the lines with the bins, the extraordinary commissioner (who,
coincidentally, is called Nicola Dell'Acqua).
It's not just about incompetents, but criminals, capable of diverting
billions from the structural funds for the Bridge, or losing 2.4 billion
of the PNRR for the canalization works, given that the land reclamation
consortia have been under special administration for decades.
And people are pissed off, women lead the protests, they tear up bills,
they besiege the town halls. We haven't seen anger like in 1980 yet, but
we are very close. And history teaches us that after every town hall set
on fire, the water has miraculously arrived.
With the nonsense of the water emergency, ordinary and extraordinary
maintenance interventions on the network and dams, canalization works,
measures on waste (think of private swimming pools and large tourist
facilities, the supply of military bases and industrial centers),
desalination plants and water purification plants to quench the
countryside's thirst, the construction of small reservoirs spread across
the territory (now the National Consortium for the management and
protection of the territory plans 10,000 by 2030! If they had planned
them thirty years ago we would not be at this point).
Only the popular struggle with these objectives, to build a bottom-up
controlled management of water, can quench Sicily's thirst.
Libero Siciliano
http://sicilialibertaria.it
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