A single regional company, with a public majority, will jointly manage the large networks
“The ecological transition will be one of the indispensable tasks for the future of humanity”. She stated it forcefully Vincenzo De Luca, president of the Campania Regionduring the meeting-interview conducted by journalist and writer Claudia Conte in the frame of Ecoworldthe Rimini event of reference for the ecological transition and the circular economy underway in Rimini until tomorrow.
A meeting which was an opportunity to talk about a “revolutionary and ambitious project” of the Campania Region, the one on management of large networks, aimed at a very specific objective: full water autonomy of the territory within 3-5 years. The investments planned are noteworthy: around 3 billion euros, most of which from regional funds.
The Plan for water autonomy
It is a 360 degree route that passes through various directions:
- new sources of supply
- reconstruction of networks
- creation of at least 20 hilly reservoirs to be available in case of drought
- supplies relating to the sources
- energy saving and interventions on the ‘sieve’ networks where Campania wastes 40% of its water.
The primary distribution networks, which from the sources reach the places of consumption and which cross several provinces of the territory, constitute the large adduction systemwhich the Campania Region has decided to consider as work of strategic interest of regional significance. He therefore decided to set up a only regional company which, De Luca clarifies, will be with a public majority and will have the management of the large water networks. The new body will administer
- eight source groups
- eight well fields
- 400 thousand cubic meters of tanks
- 600 km of networks with a diameter of up to 2200 cm
- two hydroelectric power plants.
In its action it will have and guarantee a unified vision for the different uses of the water resource:
• human consumption
• agriculture and animal husbandry
• hydroelectric energy production.
The new regional company
De Luca reiterated that theThe use, management and ownership of water resources and large networks are and will remain public, just as the definition of tariffs will remain public. There collaboration with private individuals it will take place where their skills and professional experience can be useful: the maintenance of networks and systems, the improvement of energy savings, the modernization of consumption detection systems (meters), the fight against leaks in the network. Otherwise, explains the governor, with public resources “maintenance could not be guaranteed unless water bills were tripled”.
The new regional company will also deal with the management of the large Campolattaro reservoir, whose works worth over 700 million euros were awarded “in a hurry” in recent days. This should make it possible to recover the share of water that Campania currently supplies, and will continue to supply, to Puglia, approximately 6000 liters per day. This would overcome the paradox whereby Campania on the one hand gives water to what De Luca defines as the ”sister region”, but on the other is in deficit.
The political value of choices in an increasingly fragile world
The water autonomy plan, in its various lines of intervention, according to De Luca had to find space and priority in the PNRR, which instead from this point of view is becoming a wasted opportunity because, underlines the governor, “Italy is not a serious country” and therefore in the end it will not have solved its structural problems this time either.
In this context, the Campania initiative takes on even more value, which is a virtuous example for Italy: “It is the moment in which we demonstrate efficiency as the Campania Region”, a territory which, claims De Luca, “represents another South”. “We alone have the water autonomy project”, the governor proudly underlines, because it derives from precise political choices, taken with a sense of responsibility towards future generations, looking beyond the immediate.
“We are moving towards a more fragile world and we must be careful – continues De Luca. The environmental transition requires immense resources. We will face investment problems and social problems. Either we have rivers of billions of dollars flowing towards the military industrial apparatus or we reduce this flow and invest it in the environment. By investing 8-10% of GDP in weapons, we will never have the resources.” Everything else, she concludes, “are just poems” that leave the time they find.
Source-www.adnkronos.com