More than 40 % of the water flowing in Italian facilities is lost on the way. In a third of the main cities of the country, the dispersion rate even exceeds 45 %. The upgrading site is titanic.
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In March, the schools remained closed in around twenty municipalities in the province of Chieti, in Abruzzo (center), the distribution of water having been interrupted due to repair work on pipes. A week later, she was only intermittently available in households in the region. “I stopped publishing water cuts on my Facebook profile, because people replied that there were any night interruptions anyway,” said, disappointed, Filippo Paolini, the Mayor of Lanciano, one of the affected municipalities. This episode is revealing of waste of water in Italy, an evil which is not new but which resurfaces with acuity while the peninsula is struck by a wave of historical drought.
“Italy is a country that has made water a sad example of its inability to intelligently manage a crucial good for our survival and our well-being”, criticizes the organization World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF ), which has, in recent weeks, shot the alarm bell several times in the face of the loss of water. “The Italians consume, but it might be better to say” waste “, more water than all Europeans, continues the NGO, with an average daily consumption of around 220 liters of water.”
According to data from the National Institute of Italian Statistics, more than 40 % of the water flowing in Italian pipes is lost during transportation. In a third of the main cities of the country, the dispersion rate even exceeds 45 %. The province of Chieti holds the sad national record with 70 % loss. Among the most affected regions are also Sicily or Basilicate (southern Italy).
race against the watch
The main problem lies above all in the dilapidation of the facilities: 60 % of the Italian pipe network is over thirty years old, and 25 % of these pipes were posed more than fifty years ago. The local press regularly chronizes the ruptures of pipes, transforming certain streets into rivers, as very recently still a stone’s throw from the Saint-Pierre basilica, in Rome, where the garbage cans were carried away by the waters, under the dumbfounded eyes of tourists.
The upgrading site is titanic, Italy with a network of more than 500,000 kilometers of pipes, but the government, with its investments, aims to reduce water losses by 15 % by 2026. The National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), which sets the objectives until this date, provides for a budget line of almost 4 billion euros to protect the water resources, including 900 million for infrastructure maintenance.
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