Drought in Sicily: mobile desalination plants and new wells planned for Porto Empedocle, Trapani, and Gela installations.

New wells and regeneration of other existing wells and springs, cleaning of riverbeds, mobile desalination units, and small interventions for the restoration of municipal water tankers. These are some of the fastest solutions identified by the regional steering committee for the water emergency, which met this afternoon at Palazzo d’Orleans. The committee, chaired by Renato Schifani and coordinated by the head of the regional Civil Protection Salvo Cocina, brings together technical, academic, and scientific expertise, is finalizing a plan of interventions and their related costs to be sent to Rome for evaluation of the national state of emergency for drought, already requested by the regional government. Since its establishment, the steering committee has also been operating at the provincial level with nine working groups including the Civil Engineering Department, Civil Protection, Basin Authorities, and Reclamation Consortia. This was announced in a statement by the Region.

In detail, the proposals with immediate effectiveness for mitigating the water emergency include the regeneration of around fifty existing wells and springs for drinking water use, the identification of about a hundred sites throughout Sicily near pipelines and power lines where new wells for irrigation purposes can be dug, thus safeguarding the water reserves in the dams to be exclusively used for the population. Furthermore, interventions are planned on pumping facilities and pipelines, dredging operations on six riverbeds, and funding for the reactivation of water tankers in around sixty Municipalities.

On the desalination front, work will immediately proceed with the purchase and installation of mobile units in existing sites, while technicians from the task force are currently inspecting fixed plants in Porto Empedocle, Trapani, and Gela, awaiting replacement. An important solution with a low economic impact to support agriculture in the Catania Plain may come from the repair of sluice gates on Ponte Barca, where tomorrow it will be verified if it is possible to use an additional water flow of about 500 liters per second, exploiting the gradient. Another support for agriculture may come, once the national state of emergency is declared, also from any derogations for the use of funds from the Rural Development Program.