Istat estimates that about 5 percent of the entire water reach every year is sucked into a black hole. From illegal connections to feed private swimming pools, to the pipes diverted in the Covi of the mafia bosses.
In Italy the water is dispersed not only because of rusty infrastructures and colabrod networks. A cobweb of smarten, with the complicity, sometimes, of those who should control and with the ease of those who feel unpunished, drain the resource towards illegal taps. Istat estimates that about 5 percent of the entire water flow is sucked into a black hole. And the data of the judicial statistics confirm it: the complaints, every year, are tens of thousands.
And there are no exempt prosecutors. The black heart of this system pulsates in Lazio. Lower Roman coast, between Anzio, Nettuno and Aprilia. Here, to read the acts of an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza, public water had become a private deal. To order him would have been an employee of Acqualatina spa, one who called himself “the doctor of the water”. With a parallel, illegal, but well organized career. A few hundred euros were enough (from 200 to 1,500) to obtain the direct connection to the water network, without going from normal channels. Or to reset the consumption of the meters, as if by magic. For investigators would be at least 28 documented episodes: dozens of counted counters with manipulations of all kinds. In 43, including four employees of the company in addition to the “doctor”, they ended up under investigation. But it is not an isolated case. The map of water abuses in Italy is an atlas of the absurd. A criminal diary that tells of swimming pools illegally filled with whole families illegally connected to a fountain, of bosses of the ‘ndrangheta that steal the water with the complicity of the Municipality. It happens in Sicily, in Pedara, at the foot of Etna.
A 47 -year -old woman had transformed her villa with swimming pool into an oasis fueled by an abusive connection. He had broken the seals of the counter, bypassed the supplies blocked for arrears and directly connected the house to the public network. A systematic, daily theft for an estimated value in 40 thousand euros. When the carabinieri raided the water flowed at full speed. An illegal oasis in a territory where thousands of families deal with programmed interruptions.
More to the west, in Palermo, the scene is even more paradoxical. Chief district, historic center. A tangle of colored pipes winds through the alleys. It starts from a public fountain and ends up 40 homes. All abusive connections. All out of contract. All documented by a video that has become viral. The single administrator of AMAP, the company that manages the integrated water service, Giovanni Sciortino, has declared war on the abusive: “We have verified that those who make use of illegal connections make a use of reckless water, not very thrifty”. The critical issues, although also found in normal residential contexts, mainly characterize the complexes of popular construction managed by the municipalities or by the autonomous institute of public housing. Cases that AMAP is trying to manage with the support of municipal and prefecture administrations.
In Calabria, the situation touches the grotesque. In Petilia Policastro, the carabinieri put the seals to a car wash. He had neither meter nor purifier. He took the water from the public network, without paying a euro, and downloaded it directly into the sewers. The owner was reported, the closed system. But it is in Casabona, always in Calabria, that public water has ended free straight to the headquarters of an alleged boss. The discovery is contained in the file of a maxi-investigation renamed “Nemesi” by the prosecutor of Catanzaro (acting) Vincenzo Capomolla. Carlo Mario Tallarico called “u sciubbu” could count on an abusive connection for his cement factory. According to the investigators, the mayor of the era Francesco Seminario (now former mayor) and an employee of the Consortium Frozi, who manages the integrated water service in 14 municipalities in the province of Crotone. While a Sorical officer, the company of the Region that distributes the water to the Calabrian municipalities, would have suggested to Tallaric how to avoid sanctions from water theft.
A sort of water dome that guaranteed the public good to a character described as the clan regent. A short distance away, in Capocolonna, the reclamation consortium discovered the attempt to fill a private lake with public water. The complaint came from the social pages of the Consortium through a video: “There was no counter or contract and a huge amount of water was consumed by removing it from farmers who are dealing with drought”. With the intervention of the carabinieri, the complaints were triggered, which in the last year have reached 650. In Sardinia, however, a clumsy attempt at the theft of water has created a fault that kept bolotan dry, she and Silanus. The conduct on which the cunning unknown intervened presented very high and difficult to manage pressures. The jet of water upwards was visible kilometers away. During the inspection, a polyethylene pipe hidden between the rocks and the vegetation came out. There were also all the connections equipment. In Piedmont, last February, the forest carabinieri discovered a theft of water in Valdilana, where a farmer stiffened his land at the expense of taxpayers.
In Molise, the phenomenon of illegal connections was also at the center of an fiery regional council. President Francesco Roberti called Molise Acque a “patient on the bed that needs a defibrillator” so “serves a virtuous path of recovery of the sums that spent for the supplies”. And he invited to find outlaws. The limit case, however, comes from Vasto, in Abruzzo. Here the thefts of water must have been so frequent that the mayor Francesco Menna has been forced to launch a public appeal: “Help us to understand where the abuses nest”. An admission of helplessness. And he asked the citizens to become spies, to transform themselves into sentinels. And so, Menna placed a letters of letters for anonymous delations. Because the phenomenon is difficult to eradicate. And it is above all present where abusive housing occupations occur. The last cases: Tor Bella Monaca, Ferentino, Porto Empedocle, Maddaloni, Tivoli. These are not individual deviations, but a system. A system that thrives in the weakness of the institutions.
