Sardinia was declared a state of emergency because of it water shortage. “We will allocate significant funds, we ask for the cooperation of all the mayors and responsible bodies,” said Alessandra Tonde, regional governor of Sardinia. But the problem concerns the whole of Italy and especially the southern and central regions of the country. Yesterday afternoon in Akraganta, Sicily, five thousand people demonstrated against the water shortage. Their main slogans were “vergogna”, shame and “vogliamo subito l’acqua”, we want water immediately.

Italian agriculture is on its knees. There is no more water available to irrigate the fields. In Sicily, experts have gone as far as to suggest that the lakes be emptied of fish so that their water can be used for immediate irrigation needs.

And the Catholic Church with the interventions of bishops, he asks her to solve this chronic problem. It is known that the water supply network is a “hole”. It loses more than 50% of the water during transport from the sources to the urban centers. In Calabria this percentage reaches 65%. At the same time, there are also phenomena of ill-gotten gains with regard to water carriers in which the mafia is allegedly involved. In areas of eastern Sicily, water supply has been reduced to a minimum for three weeks.

In Apulia, with Bari as its capital, livestock farmers are trying to secure and transport water in every way to save their livestock from certain death. Rainfall in the last five months has been reduced to a minimum and the impact on the olive oil crop is expected to be dramatic.

Almost all commentators, however, emphasize that these huge problems are mainly due to the fact that there are not enough far-reaching and detailed plans to deal with the whole situation. Every summer the various regions and the government of Rome “discover” the problem of water scarcity and are often limited to approving some extraordinary funding. These are limited, piecemeal aids that provide some oxygen until the autumn rains start again.

Response from Rome