The most serious water crisis in history in Sicily and the effects of climate change

With Minister Lollobrigida, as we know, the last gaffe is always the penultimate.In the sense that the owner of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, as well as brother-in-law of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, produces continuously.But that of May 10th, pronounced to the question time session of the Senate, according to which "fortunately the drought this year has affected some areas of the South and Sicily in particular", deserves particular attention.First of all why, how remember The paper, the lack of water has repercussions on agriculture in general and specifically on viticulture, perhaps the sector that is closest to Lollobrigida's heart, as well as on forage and therefore on farms, as underlined by Coldiretti, the association more listened to by the minister.

But above all because the drought follows the "palm line".The expression was invented by Leonardo Sciascia in the book The day of the owl to theorize, already in the 1960s, the advancement of the mafia in Northern Italy.The Sicilian writer could not have known that more than 60 years later his metaphor would be literal.Because if it is true, as Sciascia wrote, that "scientists say that the line of the palm tree, that is, the climate that is favorable to the vegetation of the palm tree, rises, towards the north, by five hundred meters, I think, every year", this it is even more evident with water access and management.

The latest update from the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection (ISPRA) on water severity reports a map that bears witness to a divided Italy, with Sicily already experiencing water conditions in mid-May:

Beyond Minister Lollobrigida's gaffe, we tend to forget that the penultimate drought, the worrying one in 2022, had scared especially the Central-Northern regions.As he remembered the Po River District Basin Authority in the bulletin of 13 June 2022, the Po River had recorded “the worst water drought in 70 years”.Putting on his knees farmers and energy production.With the scenes of two years ago in the North which are similar to those current of the South:only the wheat and hay harvest, according to Coldiretti estimates, It fell apart up to 70% in some parts of Sicily compared to the previous year. In the Madonie, the mountain range between Palermo and Messina, the wheat and fodder harvest was even eliminated, reports the CIA, the Italian Farmers' Confederation, whose producers in western Sicily say they have never seen such a bad year.It is a shared opinion that the 20 million euros will be of little use, just unlocked by the Ministry of Agriculture, to at least alleviate the "drought emergency".Because the problem is evidently structural.

The water crisis is not coming.It's already here

And the situation is even more critical these days with the arrival of the first heat waves.The image of goats forced to drink in the mud in the area around Caltanissetta is making the rounds."We ask the prefect for the intervention of the army.We ask that they bring us water, but that it happens immediately, without waiting for other meetings, other summits.Because our animals are dying and the costs for us are unsustainable", they said the farmers in the area.

It should also not be forgotten that water shortages across the entire peninsula are an ongoing trend time ago.This is why we analyze how Sicily is facing the most serious water crisis in its history, with a state of natural disaster that has never been declared in the month of February, it is essential to understand how to structurally address one of the most obvious irreversible effects of the climate crisis.

If politics reacts to complexity with the denial of reality

On the other hand, drought is only one of the ongoing phenomena, perhaps not even the most worrying.Giacomo Parrinello, professor of Environmental History at SciencesPo, explained it well in ainterview to Other economics following the Po crisis of 2022:

The reduced availability of water is certainly one aspect, but it is not the only one.There is also pollution, which since the 19th century has profoundly altered the chemical composition of river waters, causing an impact on life that they can - or cannot - support.A third element is the morphological alteration of the very shape of the rivers:they transport earth, sand, gravel, clay, and through this action they are the main agents that build the landscape.It is the rivers, for example, that bring sand to our beaches.Human economic activities, through a series of interventions, have significantly modified this system of erosion and transport of materials.The consequences are particularly evident in deltas:since the 1950s, in some large rivers of the world the debris has become less and less, due to human activity, and has stopped reaching the sea.The deltas then stopped advancing, instead starting to retreat and lower, thus leaving room for the sea.

After the dramatic "Po crisis" of 2022, farmers in the North have put into play a series of concrete measures to address the future, and inevitable, water shortage.Even Italian cinema, usually slow to decipher changing reality and concentrated more on small stories, has intercepted the phenomenon, producing a film appreciated And discussed as Drought by Paolo Virzì.Alarms and studies on the water crisis in Italy have been going on for years time, On the contrary for years.And politics?What did he do after the 2022 crisis?With difficulty he produced yet another national commissioner, Nicola Dell'Acqua, whose mandate "for the adoption of urgent interventions connected to the phenomenon of water scarcity" was renovated currently until 31 December 2024.In this period of time the commissioner structure led by Dell'Acqua has produced two reports, of which the second, the most recent, is the most complex.

In Italy, water reserves are running low, the main rivers and lakes are dry, the agricultural sector is on its knees and the water network is a sieve

Commissioner Dell'Acqua's report is 149 pages long:very technical and detailed, it identifies 127 urgent works against drought and inefficiencies in the use of water resources, for a total value of 3.67 billion euros, within the 562 works presented by the regions to the Ministry of Infrastructure and collections in the National Plan of Infrastructure Interventions for the Safety of the Water Sector (PNISSI), which in turn is worth 13.5 billion.The report shows all the complexity of the sector, governed by a tired and unsuitable public-private management, where responsibilities and skills partly overlap.Some essential points:

• It is not possible to speak of a condition of absence of governance in the Italian civil water sector, but rather of a governance situation that is in some ways ineffective.These conditions of fragmentation and overlapping of decision-making powers result in the composition of a sector exposed to gaps and critical issues in the management of water resources from upstream to downstream;
• The gaps in resource planning also have repercussions on the attention to its protection and renewal over time:9.1% of underground aquifers are in a state of water scarcity (19.0% of traced water bodies) and according to the latest available ISPRA estimates, only 23.7% of precipitation contributes to the recharge of the country's aquifers;
• Another critical issue concerns the presence of isolated aqueduct systems, i.e. not interconnected with each other, and which often depend on a single source of supply:when this source goes into crisis, the entire system suffers and it is necessary to resort to rationing the resource;
• The sector's obsolete and still low-tech infrastructure leads to inefficiencies and waste even during the distribution phase:the percentage water losses reach a rate of 41.2% and are among the highest in Europe (25% the EU-27+UK average)
• A low tariff, on the one hand, determines, among other things, a limited rate of infrastructure investments in the sector and, on the other, "removes responsibility" from consumption:Italy is the 2nd most water-intensive country in Europe in terms of withdrawals for drinking purposes with a value of 156.5 m3 per inhabitant, only after Greece;
• Infrastructural works are also necessary downstream of consumption, in the purification phase.To date, 1.3 million Italians still live in municipalities without a purification service, which in addition to the obvious environmental damage, once again reduces the availability of purified water.

These are issues that have been known for years, decades, but which have never been resolved until now.Commissioner Dell'Acqua himself, in a hearing at the Chamber Environment Commission dating last March, he admitted that "the new works will take years, now we need to manage the resources in the best possible way".But he did not provide a deadline for submitting the so-called “drought plan.”

Added to this is the acceleration of global warming, which has occurred in the last 14 months continuous records.Making the predictions he had for 2022 already "old". elaborate the IPCC on “impacts, adaptation and vulnerability” concerning the Mediterranean Sea:

In southern Europe, the number of days with insufficient water resources (availability below demand) and drought increases under all global warming scenarios.In the prospects of a global temperature increase of 1.5°C and 2°C, water scarcity concerns, respectively, 18% and 54% of the population.Similarly, soil aridity increases with increasing global warming:in a scenario of a 3°C temperature rise, soil aridity is 40% higher than in a scenario with a 1.5°C temperature rise.Current adaptation is mainly based on structures that ensure the availability and supply of water resources.The long-term effectiveness of these structures is questioned as they create a vicious cycle in which water supplies attract developments that require them to be further increased.Furthermore, in the case of high global warming, these facilities may become insufficient.

Faced with this alarming picture, which already seems to make dystopian fantasies concrete, we look at investments with confidence expected from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR):almost 4 billion euros, to which it goes added another billion euros, obtained from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport as part of the remodulation of the PNRR, to be allocated to the "reduction of losses in water distribution networks, including digitalisation and monitoring of the networks".

Will it help?We certainly cannot afford simplifications and denials of reality. Disputed from Greenpeace to the Trento Festival of Economics, Minister Salvini responded with a hard face about the drought:"Drought?It's raining like it hasn't rained in a century.You have the wrong address.Go to Veneto to talk about drought, a phenomenon."

An offensive phrase for a Sicily in enormous difficulty, which goes hand in hand with Lollobrigida's gaffe.And which completely rejects the complexity of ongoing climate changes for which, remaining in Italy, the flooding in the North can cohabit with the drought in the South.

Commissioners, control rooms and (few) funds

Meanwhile in the Sicilian Region the sector most affected by the drought, i.e. agriculture, had to deal with the resignation of the councilor and vice-president Luca Sammartino: strong man of the League in Sicily e discussed champion of preferences, Sammartino is investigated for corruption.His skills have been advocated on an interim basis by the President of the Region Renato Schifani, who more generally is personally following all the management of the drought in Sicily.Which on the island has repercussions on agriculture and energy but also on access to drinking water.For months, in fact, they have begun rationing, i.e. the reduction of water supplies for private homes:that of March concerned 93 Municipalities located in the provinces of Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Enna, Palermo and Trapani.

In addition to the regional reductions in water supplies, the Municipalities also develop a series of union ordinances for water saving, as can be seen in this map elaborate by the Basin Authority of the Sicily hydrographic district:

The situation is destined to worsen, given the enormous flow of tourists arriving for the summer season.The regional government is aware of this and, awaiting the national plan against drought, and after the alarm launched in February from the weekly report of the Anbi Observatory on Water Resources, in March it had nominated in turn another commissioner, this time regional:

The provision, provided for by regional law number 13 of 2020, is part of the context of persistent drought conditions which has reduced the availability of water in the Sicilian reservoirs.In fact, 2023 was the fourth consecutive year with rainfall below the long-term historical average and even the first months of this year, characterized by higher temperatures and lack of rainfall, have confirmed this trend so far.It is no coincidence that last February the regional government declared a state of water crisis for both the irrigation and livestock sectors.The new commissioner will, among other things, have to carry out a series of urgent initiatives.In particular:- actions aimed at saving drinking water, such as the reduction of withdrawals and the development of consumption reduction programs, with reference to the promotion of the efficiency of external uses, the verification of uses with the implementation of saving strategies, the implementation of technological practices and modernization programs aimed at reducing consumption of user equipment and water saving awareness campaigns;- actions aimed at increasing available resources, such as coordination with the national extraordinary commissioner for the adoption of urgent interventions related to the phenomenon of water scarcity (law 68/2023);the recognition and planning of urgent interventions to find alternative resources;the identification of solutions for finding new water resources for drinking use;the reconnaissance and actions for the use of wells and springs, as well as the use of dead volumes in the reservoirs and the interconnection of reservoirs;- actions derogating from regional regulations aimed at increasing available drinking water resources, such as the recognition of current supply limitations and the proposal of ordinances derogating from regional regulations.

Not even a year after the appointment of the national commissioner for drought, the Sicilian Region is therefore choosing to do it itself.Why?Sources within the Region, whom we listened to and who we assured of anonymity, declare that in this period of time there have been several discussions and repeated requests for reconnaissance but no allocation.On the other hand, both in the report by Commissioner Dell'Acqua and in the National Plan of infrastructural interventions for the safety of the water sector, there are numerous interventions described as necessary in Sicily.Yet to date there has been little progress.

In April, after the regional commissioner, in Sicily is born also the inevitable control room for the water emergency, with the task of "identifying, stimulating and coordinating the most urgent and non-deferrable interventions to mitigate the effects of the crisis":a "team of professionals", with internal staff from the Region and some teachers from Sicilian universities.The first solutions come identified at the first meeting:

The proposals with immediate effect for the mitigation of the water emergency concern the regeneration of around fifty existing wells and springs for drinking water use, the identification of around a hundred sites, close to pipelines and electricity lines, throughout Sicily in which to dig new wells for irrigation use, thus safeguarding the water supplies present in the dams to be used exclusively for the population.Furthermore, interventions are planned on pumping systems and pipelines, mud-sludging operations on six river crossings, and funding for the reactivation of tankers in around sixty municipalities.On the watermaker front, we will work immediately with the purchase and installation of mobile modules in the existing sites, while waiting to be able to proceed with the replacement of the fixed systems in Porto Empedocle, Trapani and Gela, where the technicians of the task force in these hours they are carrying out inspections.

One month later, that is, on May 17th, the Sicilian Region allocate three million euros "for the financing of projects for the search for new water sources, for the evaluation of the possibility of reactivating some desalination plants and for the construction of water pipes to alleviate the crisis conditions of some areas of the island".Meanwhile the Council of Ministers of 6 May declares the national state of emergency due to the drought in Sicily, allocating another 20 million euros.

Beyond the political controversy and the promise of new funds, it is clear that these are absolutely inadequate allocations.According to estimates by the technicians of the Sicilian Region, at least 5 billion euros would be needed to resolve the main water problems.

Dams and watermakers

One of the most urgent issues to address in Sicily concerns dams.There are 29 reservoirs spread across the island, with a total capacity of just over one billion cubic meters of water, but the volumes of water collected are worrying.According to the latest data relating to April 2024, the gap compared to the same month of 2023 is 35%.One example above all is emblematic:the Pozzillo dam has a total reservoir capacity of 150 million cubic meters of water, but in April 2024 it contained less than 6 million.And this collapse is due not only to the absence of rain in recent months but to ordinary maintenance problems due, for example, to siltation, i.e. the accumulation of debris on the seabed.Only because of this factor gets lost 34% of the total volume, i.e. over 300 million cubic meters of water, which will remain unavailable until the dams are cleaned.It's worth reiterating:in the absence of multi-year planning what should be simple ordinary maintenance becomes a structural problem.With the further insult that even if it were to rain again in Sicily, the reservoirs would still not be able to accumulate so much water.

He explains it well Blue suitcase the journalist e popularizer Gabriele Ruggeri:

Most Sicilian dams are not tested.This means that, for safety reasons, the dams can be filled to a maximum of just over half of their actual capacity.At the same time we know that the amount of precipitation has changed with climate change:no longer light and constant rains but intense thunderstorms, what unimaginative journalists call water bombs.What happened in both 2022 and 2023 is that when this type of rainfall occurred, the reservoirs accumulated water beyond the safe level allowed and therefore had to discharge the excess quantity.And this means that the amount of water lost, net of evaporation, does not allow us to adequately face the dry months.Another lack is that of connections, which would instead allow a dam that has excess water to compensate for the suffering reservoir.

Ruggeri then focuses on another case, that of Lake Pergusa.Even though it is not technically a reservoir, its history is significant as if action is not taken in time, there is a risk of irreversible changes from an environmental point of view.

Lake Pergusa, in the province of Enna, is a historic basin that has existed since the times of the Greeks, as evidenced by the myth of Proserpina.This heritage, both naturalistic and cultural, is today almost completely dry, because it no longer receives water:many of the channels that flowed into the lake have been blocked over the years, for a thousand reasons.With two consequences:the narrowing of the watercourse and excessive salinisation.The lake is becoming a salt marsh, so much so that this year we saw flamingos, not exactly a good sign for a body of fresh water.In fact, it means that the water is becoming salty and shallow.In this case, a connection with the Ancipa dam, which is located near Lake Pergusa, would have been a saving grace.

Due to that tendency whereby complex problems are answered with simple solutions, even in Sicily there are those who argue that the main, if not the only, choice to overcome the lack of water already exists.And it is to turn to the sea, making its salt water drinkable.There is no shortage of raw material for the largest island in the Mediterranean.But the story of watermakers in Sicily is full of waste and exorbitant costs:the three watermakers theoretically existing in Gela, Porto Empedocle and Trapani have been closed for more than ten years, and so far the idea of ​​restoring them did not arouse great enthusiasm.If it is true that watermakers are incentivized at a national level since the Drought decree of April 2023, the restoration of the three existing structures has been expected also by the Region which, however, while waiting to understand whether the operation is economically sustainable, supports the hypothesis of mobile watermakers to be installed on existing sites.

On the header MeridioNews Gabriele Ruggeri had spoke of late solutions and missed opportunities:

In reality, the solution of the desalination plants, which also offers guarantees (just look at the effects in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, where however the quantity of desalination plants cannot be comparable to the Italian one), could not be decisive and in any case arrives at a time late.First of all for the condition of the Sicilian pipes, which should all be overhauled and in many cases replaced.And here the missed opportunity with the PNRR weighs more heavily than ever, with the first resounding slap suffered by the then Musumeci government, which saw all 61 projects presented by the reclamation consortia rejected without the possibility of appeal - whose reform, it is good to remember, it is languishing waiting to arrive in the Chamber, but despite the emergencies this will not happen until after the European elections.And speaking of PNRR, the watermakers are not even included in the Region's programming, just to underline how we were unable to predict such a heavy season from a climatic point of view.A prediction which, on the other hand, was successful - to cite one case - in Puglia, which with PNRR money is building a mega desalination plant in Taranto, which will be ready in 2026.

Finally the rain arrived in Sicily.And, as expected, it did not resolve the serious water deficit accumulated over the last year.On its Facebook page the SIAS, Sicilian Agrometeorological Information Service, he spread a long note on June 3rd.In which it is observed that:

The rains, where they fell more abundantly, brought benefits not only to the tree crops, but also to the cereals and fodder crops of the cooler hilly and mountainous areas, especially in the western sector, where the crops were still in a sufficiently good vegetative state, such to still be able to take advantage of these not too late contributions.However, the rains that fell on fodder and cereals in many areas of the eastern sector were practically irrelevant, where the water deficit and higher than normal temperatures had already led to an early partial or total drying out of the vegetation.As regards the accumulation of reserves in the hydrographic network and in underground water bodies, once again the events of the month did not allow the previously accumulated deficit to be alleviated.The low intensity of rainfall that characterized the events and the soil conditions favored the almost total absorption of the rainfall by the surface layers of the soil, without significant releases towards the watercourses.At the end of May the precipitation accumulated in Sicily in the last 12 months, with a regional average of 453 mm, fell below the psychological threshold of 500 mm on average, a value that had not been recorded since the great drought of 2002, when in the same period the accumulation average was 415 mm.

Meanwhile the Sicilian Region he presented the “drought plan” to the Civil Protection (whose ministry is headed by the former president Musumeci).Faced with a dramatic situation - Lake Fanaco will see its stocks run out in mid-July and Ancipa in early October, forcing the suspension of the supply of drinking water in the provinces of Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Enna, Palermo and Trapani - the most immediate interventions concern already known solutions:tankers, new and repaired, reactivation or excavation from scratch of 120 wells and 20 springs, repairs on the most damaged connection networks.And at the same time other proposals are making their way:some more concrete, like the convoy of water from an ENEL energy production dam to another public dam, in order to supply water to the province of Agrigento;others more "imaginative", such as the so-called "cloud seeding", or cloud seeding, proposal by the mayor of Mussomeli, one of the Sicilian towns most affected by the water crisis due to the drying up of Lake Fanaco.But there is still a lot about the technique of artificially stimulating rainfall perplexity. 

On the occasion of World Environment Day, Legambiente he recalled that the so-called "drought emergency" concerns the whole of Italy.And he launched three proposals to address in a systemic way what for some time should have been framed as a structural phenomenon:

1. A single direction should be re-established by the District Basin Authorities to know availability, real consumption, potential demand and to define updated water balances;
2. We need an integrated national strategy at river basin level, which pushes for the implementation of new and modern practices and measures to reduce water demand and avoid waste.With them we understand the savings in civil uses through the reduction of losses and consumption but above all in agricultural uses also through an intelligent remodulation of the regional programming tools of the new CAP, to make them capable of directing farmers' choices towards crops and agri-food systems less water demanding and more efficient irrigation methods;
3. It is essential to restore all those practices that allow water to be retained in the area as much as possible and to encourage actions to restore the ecological functionality of the area and restore ecosystem services.At the same time, it is necessary to promote systems for the recovery of rainwater and the reuse of purified wastewater.

Once again, therefore, climate change is making us face the failures of a system that is increasingly at risk of collapsing.Because ultimately the increase in temperatures is an accelerator of already existing inefficiencies and inequalities.The drought in Sicily is a clear example of this.Water reductions for private homes or the almost total absence in reservoirs or for agricultural uses have been a widespread reality for years in the provinces of Agrigento and Caltanissetta.Personally, I good-naturedly make fun of the local journalists who every year are "forced" to produce, several times a month and in different neighborhoods, always the same item, with the protests and complaints of increasingly tired and resigned people.Who knows what Leonardo Sciascia, who on the other hand was originally from Racalmuto, in the province of Agrigento, would say today about this dried up and repeated groundhog day.

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