WATER PRESSURE
Italy is trying to fix its many old leaky pipes to preserve an increasingly scarce resource
The pure, drinkable water of an underground mountain spring makes an improbable 177-kilometre journey to the Puglian city of Bari, propelled by gravity along an aqueduct constructed a century ago. But once arriving in the city itself, much of that water is lost, seeping through hidden holes and ruptures on its path through city pipes.
Almost every country and every utility company loses drinking water before it reaches consumers. But by the standards of developed countries, the leaks are especially severe in Italy, where two millennia ago Romans mastered the art of transporting clean water, and where in modern times water systems have instead come to symbolize underinvestment, mismanagement and economic decline.
“We invented the system, but now we have a lot of holes,” Roberto Cingolani, an Italian minister in charge of making the country more environmentally sustainable, said in an interview.
Across Italy, and especially in the poorer south, pipes that comprise city water systems can be 70 years old, ossified and brittle to the point of breaking. That contributes to a loss rate of 42 per cent nationally. In Bari, half the water is lost before it reaches customers.
“If we (lose) water, it's going to drain the country,” Cingolani said. He called Puglia, in Italy's southern heel, “one of the most critical” areas.
The Italian government has included leaky pipes on the lengthy list of problems it hopes to address with the historic tranche of money — 191.5 billion euros (US$227.6 billion) — it will soon receive from the European Union, part of a rescue package for countries battered economically by the coronavirus pandemic. Officials in Puglia say fixing leaks now is essential to head off a down-theroad emergency in a part of the continent where rainfall is projected to continually diminish, reducing the supply to rivers, streams and aquifers that feed potable water networks.
“This is the only way to save water for future generations,” said Francesca Portincasa, industrial co-ordinator for the water company, Acquedotto Pugliese.
The work of addressing the leaks is labour intensive. Puglia's water network consists of 21,000 kilometres of pipes. On rare occasions the leaks can knock out service or cause dips in water pressure, and consumers flood complaint lines. But most of the leaks are invisible to the public, and the only way to find them is with teams going block by block through the city.
Antonio Marchitelli removed the street-level cover of a tiny shaft
and touched an acoustic pole to an exposed pipe.
“We might have a leak somewhere around here,” said Marchitelli, 52. The sound he heard was a high-pitched gurgle, indicative of a problem nearby.
He and his partner, Lorenzo Lorusso, moved to the next spot, hoping to get closer.
After examining two more pipes, sensing they were on the right path, they hooked up sound frequency devices to two different points of the pipe, enabling the detection of any irregularities between those points.
“We'll know with 95 per cent certainty the location of the rupture,” Marchitelli said.
If any area has an incentive to better take care of its resources, it's Puglia, one of the most water-scarce parts of Europe.
“You cannot grasp Puglia if you don't grasp its history as a thirsty region,” said Fabiano Amati, a politician
and the region's former assessor for public works, including water.
What transformed Puglia — reducing disease, modernizing cities, birthing vineyards and fields of tomatoes — was one of the largest public works projects of the time, an engineering attempt, launched in 1906, to tap into a massive, underground spring more than 160 km, away, in the region of Campania. Some 20,000 men worked on the project at any moment. Construction took nine years.
And when it was over, a new aqueduct — relying on little more than stones and gravity — was supplying water to Bari and other cities, having essentially redirected a river 90 degrees. Puglia has since tapped into other faraway water sources, as well.
In 2017, so little rain fell in Campania that the surrounding areas, including Puglia, had to announce an official crisis.
Other parts of Italy did, too. Officials now expect similar episodes, and corresponding rationing measures, every few years.
Precipitation has not only become less frequent, but it tends to come in shorter, more intense bursts — a pattern that leads to more evaporation and less water draining into the aquifer that feeds the aqueduct's springs.
“This is a resource that depends on rainfall,” said Luciano Venditti, an engineer in charge of the aqueduct's overall network. “We're seeing a gradual reduction.”
Italy said the amount of water lost in its pipes has been increasing “constantly” since 2008. And Puglia, having reduced its own loss rate, is far from the most extreme example.
In the province of Frosinone, to the southeast of Rome, the loss rate is 80 per cent — calculated as the difference between the amount of water fed into the system and the amount of water that is paid for by consumers.
Marchitelli and Lorusso, wrapped up their day having found just one leak, as opposed to the usual three or four. As they finished their shift, they told the story of a leak they located the previous day — the rare rupture that caused water pressure to drop in apartment buildings. The break seemed significant, but it was also under asphalt, and Marchitelli and Lorusso spent one day looking for it, then another — no luck. When finally they detected something, a resident handed them beers and panzerotti, a local fried dough specialty.
“We were right out on the street with the beers,” Marchitelli said.
He said it was an unusually celebratory moment in the search for leaks. “Normally, when people are waterless, they are exceedingly angry,” Marchitelli said.