Water infrastructures, 4.5 billion planned and not spent in Sicily

In Sicily, in the 2010-2020 decade, interventions for the improvement of water infrastructures were activated for a total value of 4.878 billion euro, but only 7.5 per cent of these resources materialised in works that were actually completed, with an expenditure of approximately 365.8 million euro with an actual per capita annual expenditure of 6.7 euro (against 88.3 euro per capita that remained only on paper).

This is a passage from the report presented during the first edition of the Forum Acqua Sicilia, organised by Legambiente Sicilia in Agrigento: "The water crisis that hit Sicily in 2024, which has become to all intents and purposes a climate change hotspot, has made evident the inadequacy of the infrastructure and systems for the collection, distribution and management of water - the Legambiente representatives write -. It is a deficiency that weighs above all on the shoulders of hundreds of thousands of citizens forced to deal with severe water rationing, and on the regional agricultural sector, which in 2024 suffered a net economic loss estimated at three billion euro due to the drought, combined with a drastic drop in production: -80% in olive oil production and peaks of up to 100% in the production of cereals, fodder and wheat". This year the situation does not seem to have improved much: 'Net of a better condition of the Ancipa reservoir, almost at maximum altitude, the other reservoirs for drinking water, essential for supplying Western Sicily, are all either in the same condition as in June 2024 or even worse. Of particular note is the invaded quantity in the Gargia and Poma dams below almost 12 Mmc,' reads the report.

In recent years, the investments allocated to the water sector in the short and medium term - including those already planned, such as those in the NRP - amount to a total of approximately two billion. These resources finance interventions ranging from drinking water purification and distribution to network maintenance and purification. Among these funds are: 230 million euro allocated through the ERDF 2021-2027 programme for the integrated water service, assigned to the Sicilian ATOs following the approval of the nine area plans; about 360 million from the Pnrr and the Pniissi; and more than 1.2 billion still to be allocated for future interventions. At the regional level, 100 million has also been allocated for the purchase of three mobile desalinators and the related adduction works, as well as a multi-year plan of over 250 million, currently being implemented by Siciliacque, for the strengthening of the regional water backbones.

"Reviewing the institutional architecture of the system," says Tommaso Castronovo, president of Legambiente Sicilia, "is certainly the first problem to be addressed through the creation of a single and integrated governance of water, so that all Sicilian citizens start from equal conditions. In order to be able to identify an optimal area, it is necessary for it to be equipped with all the characteristics that make it possible to apply a single tariff that is comparable with that of other neighbouring areas'.

The picture of the regional water infrastructure situation, Legambiente reiterates, remains critical. Sicily has 46 large and medium-sized reservoirs, with a total theoretical capacity of more than 1.1 billion cubic metres, more than 360 million of which are intended for potable or mixed potable-hydroelectric use. The management of these reservoirs is entrusted to a multiplicity of public and private entities: from Siciliacque, the overflow manager, to ENEL, from the Consorzi di Bonifica to Drar. A fragmented system that often suffers from serious management shortcomings. This is demonstrated by the data on the silting up of numerous reservoirs, a direct effect of poor maintenance and the absence of fundamental periodic interventions, such as sludge removal operations. To this must be added the lack of testing, neglected intake and manoeuvring infrastructures and emblematic cases such as that of the Trinità di Delia dam, in the Castelvetrano countryside, emptied due to the failure to check its seismic tightness.