Italy is suffering water shortage and cuts. Pescara’s via Rigopiano, via Fonte Romana and part of the San Giuseppe district: no water all day, except for a few hours at night, since May. Residents take to the streets with the association: ‘Solutions now’.
Complaints and denunciations to the Public Prosecutor’s Office by individual citizens, asking for possible compensation for damages, but also a possible collective denunciation: ready to do anything until water is restored to the taps of the residents of via Rigopiano, via Fonte Romana and in general in the San Giuseppe district, where so many people have been without water all day since May, and who can only use it at night, again with low pressure.
The consumer association Abaco has taken to the streets with the residents of the area to denounce a situation that goes far beyond inconvenience and is truly uninhabitable, so much so that its representative, Teodoro Pace, has questioned article 31 of the Pescara Municipality’s hygiene regulations, which states that “buildings with this type of service interruption are no longer habitable”, He explains that, according to the article, homes without water supply and without a buffer solution are uninhabitable and that the first citizen has the power to evict them and allow them to return only after, as the article states, “the restoration of sanitary conditions and the issue of a new certificate of habitability”.
This is a problem for everyone, but even more so for the disabled and elderly people who live in the area, and there are many of them, he points out, many of whom are apparently unable to heat their homes at all because the boiler sometimes fails at low pressure and shuts off.
The situation has become unbearable. Some say they are forced not to sleep in order to be able to use the washing machine, clean the bathroom or carry out other normal cleaning activities in their homes. A situation that has exhausted the residents, especially from a psychological point of view, while the other side, the association denounces, has only received evasive answers. The association also took the opportunity to point out that the problem is not related to the work on the network and that the current situation is in stark contrast with the Aca’s own ‘Charter for Integrated Water Services’, which states that “It is a priority commitment to guarantee a continuous service (24 hours a day, every day of the year), regular and to reduce as much as possible the duration of any inefficiency. If this is not possible, the manager undertakes to inform the citizens immediately and fully, indicating the start, duration and cause of the service interruption, and to take all the necessary measures to cause the least inconvenience to users, including the provision of alternative emergency services (as provided for in Chapter 10 of this Service Charter).
“It sounds like a joke, but have they read the company’s service charter?” says Abaco, citing other points in the charter, including that relating to the “minimum technical levels (standards) of supply of the aqueduct service”, for which, he continues, “ACA is not guaranteeing these citizens what it should be guaranteeing by contract”, namely “a daily per capita supply at the point of delivery of 150 litres per day per inhabitant and a minimum flow rate of not less than 0.10 litres per second”.
The citizens are therefore prepared to take legal action, with the support of the Consumers’ Association, which has finally reiterated the demands of the inhabitants, namely the immediate supply of water by tankers “as provided for in the Service Charter in the event of an emergency”, as Abaco points out, and a technical meeting to be convened as soon as possible by the municipality, to which the citizens, who have been living in more than critical conditions since May, and the Association should be invited, in order to define the problems of the existing network and plan its total restructuring.
