A dossier turns the spotlight on Messina’s water: ‘An ordinance for seven months forbids drinking it’.
The denunciation of a citizens’ committee calling for clarity on the quality of the water flowing from city taps. ‘Since September, only use for hygienic and sanitary reasons has been allowed. Let’s go to the Procura’.
Is the water in the Italian city of Messina, the harbour town on the island of Sicily, drinkable? Members of the citizens’ committee with the unequivocal name “We want water from the tap” ask themselves. A dossier was presented at Palazzo Zanca, from which emerges the lack of certain data and an ordinance in force since September that allows the use of water service only for hygienic-sanitary reasons.
The reference is to Ordinance No 151 of the mayor of Messina, which in September 2024 prohibited the use of water for purposes other than sanitation. This is what the members of the committee said, adding that the public prosecutor’s office will be involved because ‘it is unacceptable that in Italy’s 13th city for 7 months bars, restaurants, hospitals, public institutions, and citizens have been forced to use non-drinking water by ordinance’.
‘Today we would have liked to illustrate the data on the quality of water in Messina, but they did not provide them to us despite our repeated requests,’ the committee continues, ’Yet by law and according to the Amam Service Charter, the data must be published and even communicated directly to citizens along with the bill. Why don’t they do this? Are there perhaps critical issues in the water we drink that they do not want to tell us? Knowing what water we drink is a right that is denied to us’.
‘The lack of transparency and publicity of the acts and data on water in Messina is unacceptable, and we will organise new sit-ins and initiatives of protest and denunciation until all the information on the matter is made known: from the quality of the water supplied to the arsenic in Contesse, from the data on the water from the new wells introduced last September into the city’s network to Arera’s macro-indicators to measure the quality of the water service.
The committee then illustrates a detailed account of water interruptions, pollution and citizens’ reports over the last two-three years, which testify to the critical nature of Messina’s integrated water service management as confirmed by Arera’s six macro-indicators that since 2017 have been measuring the quality of the service rendered to citizens and which see our city almost always placed in the worst classes. Even these data, as mentioned, could not be easily found, as they are not highlighted on the Amam or Messina Municipality websites’.
The last chapter of the dossier is dedicated to the topic ‘Water and the Strait Bridge’: ‘It is not true that with the bridge construction sites Messina’s water will not be affected: with data in hand we show not only that the water from the wells identified by Stretto di Messina belongs to our city and the neighbouring municipalities, but also that the 5 million litres a day needed by the bridge construction sites will make the availability of water in the city increasingly critical’.
Lastly, the ‘We want water from the tap’ committee launches an appeal for public water: ‘We ask the mayors of the Messina area to call themselves and take back the direct management of the integrated water service in the area, opposing the privatist aims of the Region through its commissioner of the Messina ATI.
