If it is not a risk in the strict sense, we are close. Water management in Italy remains the most problematic public service. Large companies evaluate it as the business of the future with investments and synergies with other network infrastructures. Cassa Depositi a Prestiti has established, however, that 25,3 billion euros are needed to cover the dysfunctions of years.
The goal to reach remains standing from the classic game of risk. The players are there, but they wonder when and how. Questions open until the government has established a clear and shared strategy with territories and operators. The recent example of the SEN in the energy field can help in this regard. However, for a few days there have also been proposals from the Regions on the table. The institutions that together with the Municipalities pay the highest price of disservices and protests.
2017 was the annus horribilis for drought, announced crises and obsolete networks. The summer rain deficit was 41% and the summer was among the hottest since 1800. Once again, we discovered the need to put a big plan with more guidelines. The money must be recovered through the sales tariffs spread over the various types of consumption. For the government mission "Italiasicura", it is necessary to invest 4-5 billion euros a year. In a nutshell, in a country that has high levels of poverty, it is around 80 Euros per inhabitant per year.
The governors in the State-Regions Conference pointed out that this economic need is not covered by the investment capacity from the tariff. Their spokeswoman Donatella Spano – coordinator of the Environment commission – in illustrating the approved thematic document, she compared Italy to the rest of Europe. For extraordinary maintenance, France spends 32 euros per inhabitant, Germany 82, the United Kingdom and Denmark over 100. Data that tell us that it's not just the end users who pay, in countries where inequalities are less evident than in Italy.
Risk, then, cannot be played out only within national borders. The field is Europe. The Regions are attacking and asking the Union to acknowledge that Italy is the most disadvantaged country on the old continent. Without disturbing moral principles or ethical considerations on water as a common good, indispensable for progress, development and protection of the environment. Two premises are enough. The first: the need for infrastructural interventions to improve the capacity of the reservoir, to recharge the aquifer, to favor adequate methods of distribution at a territorial level.
The second: Italy is at the center of the Mediterranean, where the climatic phenomena of drought and rising temperatures produce the most negative effects. 11,85 billion from the Development and Cohesion Fund and the European Structural Funds have been spent in recent years. But between 2008 and 2012 Sardinia, Sicily, Campania, Lazio, Abruzzo, Friuli Venezia Giulia, had losses in pipelines between 45 and 55%. Risk can become a dangerous game.
