The provision on public water signed by Cinquestelle is on the rise. The bill – part of the Movement's electoral programme, later included in the government contract with the League – has so far produced a far from consenting parliamentary and industrial climate. The entrepreneurial world that ensures the management of water supplies presented itself unitedly at the hearings of the Environment Commission of the Chamber, supporting very different theses from those of the Movement.
The deputies are examining the proposal of the Hon. Federica Daga, according to whom the time has come to revolutionize the governance of the system and of service assignments. Management must be public and participatory to allow citizens to control the organization processes and methods of providing the main public service. Well intentioned, certainly. Starting from the current system of tariffs and functions of the Regulatory Authority for Energy, Networks and the Environment - the Arera - however, the Cinquestelle want to re-entrust these tasks to the Minister of the Environment. They propose to consider all forms of management currently in the hands of joint-stock companies as expired in 2020 and to review the territorial areas of management. An upheaval with chain effects (if it ever sees the light) at the end of the confrontation in the parliamentary commission. It picks up again in January.
In the hearings, the managers explained that business and industrial skills are needed to continue to supply water safely. The system is certainly sick and needs to be treated. But the treatments must have rehabilitative effects, of general recovery, without undermining the principles of good management, profitability and quality of service. A lot of water intended for families is still lost in the transport pipelines, but because the maintenance of the networks has been poor. In some cities, water is rationed at certain times of the year. Who is certain that by changing identity – worse, against many wills – things will improve? The trade unions went on strike on December 17, worried about 70 jobs at risk with the creation of special companies or public law entities from scratch. In the province of Avellino, the Italian Left and the Communist Refoundation have launched a petition for a consultative referendum on public water management. Determined, but not so much. They themselves say that not all public water management is virtuous. And for the debts accumulated by the public consortium Alto Calore (the largest operator in Irpinia) the help of the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti is requested.
The coverage of the management costs of the companies must be linked to the tariffs applied, moreover recently revised with corrective safeguards for large families. Do you want to achieve the nationalization of the service? It would cost up to 20 billion, according to the calculations of the Ref. It would be an isolated case, off the market, in the world of Italian public services. We recall the model of the special companies of the 90s, then transformed, the implications with the 1994 reform (Legge Galli) and the effects of the 2011 referendum. That industrial model today would have excessive costs and risks for the state coffers, which should provide for practically everything, every day and in every context with our own resources. Is it out of place to say where you would get the necessary money? On the other hand, the licensed companies supported investments in the certainty of being able to recover them as long as they held the ownership of the concession. Getting them out is not an easy exercise. Nor painlessly, because someone will have to pay off those balance sheets of companies often listed on the stock exchange. The worst estimate of compensation for unrecovered investments is 15 billion euros. Is there always trousers? Municipalities would in effect be the real managers of public water and no Spa could aspire to govern consumption networks and bills.
In the calls for political moderation, it was explained that it is appropriate to maintain the determination of tariffs with two levels: the local through the competence of the regional management bodies and the national one entrusted to the Authority for Energy, Networks and the Environment. Giovanni Valotti President of Utilitalia says that the regulation of the Authority has led in a few years to results that had not been achieved in previous decades. "The management scale of the water must be attested - he underlines - at least to 500.000 inhabitants served to avoid the proliferation of small and very small companies that would jeopardize the continuity of the service".
In addition to investments, a serious reform hypothesis must also consider network planning, administrative management capacity and territorial governance. Nor should we forget that a new national water strategy must take into account climate change, European regulations on credit lines and European fines for (deficient) purification that is paid for in the water bill. We are at 4 billion a year. Let's stop here.
