Bad management and dry taps in Turin
* Please help my Water Scarcity students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice. David Zetland
Bad management and dry taps in Turin, The one-handed economist
Kiara writes*
Water scarcity in the metropolitan area of Turin (Italy) is the result of climate change, weak government policy, and corruption.
Turin’s watershed stretches across 570 km2 at the foot of the Cottian Alps. With water coming from the Sangone, Dora, Stura and Po rivers (Italy’s longest), Turin does not seem a natural place for water scarcity, but now its citizens struggle for water.
The first issue Turin faces is leakage. According to a member of the Turin Water Committee, 47% of its 356 million m3 (MCM) supply is lost to leaks (Transnational Institute 2018). In 2022, Prime Minister Mario Draghi blamed leakage on bad management and weak governmental supervision of water allocation. SMAT (Societa Metropolitata Acque Torino), the public organization that has managed Turin’s water since 2001 has not made much progress in reducing leaks. Their Consolidated Financial Statement for 2021, 2022 says very little about investing in leak management.
Second is climate change. In 2022, Turin experienced a drought of 110 days — the second longest drought in 65 years (Corriere Torino 2022). The 80 percent drop in precipitation left the Po dry in places.
The weakness of SMAT’s management is clearly shown in the leakage statistics, but also in social tensions over sharing scarcity.
A state of emergency was declared in June 2022, with many limits on water use. Outdoor watering and irrigation, car washing, and refilling pools and fountains were prohibited, on pain of fines ranging from €25 to 500. The state of emergency shows how bad management can take away peoples’ right to use water for recreational but also for farming.
With surrounding cities re-entering a state of emergency in February 2023, it will not be long before Turin is also in a state of emergency. It is urgent that SMAT, the Municipalities of Turin, and the Italian government work quickly to reduce the harm that water scarcity will bring to Turin’s people.
Bottom Line: Poor management has increased water scarcity in Turin. Citizens deserve better.
* Please help my Water Scarcity students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice.
bad management meets climate change.
resulting in…worse management.
in tines of scarcity people fight for resources…we should have expected that, but what we are seeing worldwide is bad management being replaced by criminal management…people fighting for luxuries, killing entirely the generous nature (and human “infrastructure”) that cushioned them from the effects of merely bad management.
A deeper dig would be helpful. How much would leaks cost to fix? Who pays? How is water management funded generally. What are the politics? Weak management is just not a good explanation.
bad management works for me. having seen it in action. i suppose good management would know how much the leaks would cost to fix, and how much they would cost to not fix. sometimes asking for the details of “how to fix” is just a way to put off finding better management.
meanwhile how do you fix climate change, given that we…you and me…are complicit in the bad management of this, of what led to this.
Climate change is irrelevant in that context.
of course it’s irrelevant. it’s only the cause of the problem.
Robin:
Thank you. Your point is really what the student and Prof. Zetland are looking for today. How the writer improves the article. It is a teaching lesson coming from the reader.
Coberly offers another avenue to go down.
Thanks, Run
I think that what I am trying to do is point out that bad
management is always with us. but nature is kind enough
has been kind enough up to know to provide so much excess that bad management can get away with being bad. also the workers and customers are usually flexile enough to cope with bad management and get the job done or buy the product as “good enough.’
now that bad mangement of natural resources has brough us climate change resources are growing more scarce and bad managemnt does not have the cushion it had. and political bad management has made workers and custommers less willing to put up withhaving to fix on the one hand, or put up with on the other, the results of bad management.
those leaks became a problem after the drought cut off the surplus water that bad management was always wasting.
otherise i am just grumpy from watcing people constantly cut away from the chase to explore in detail some aspect irrelevant to the problem but which they knowmore about…as, for example, the “importance of definitions, or civility or good grammar.
this time i’ll blame the typos on my inability to see what i am writing behind the sticky note ads.
Though the Colorado Basin is loudest of late in the news, this is something that could apply to any of America’s middling river systems: the Rio Grande, irrigating all of south Texas (and northern Mexico), the Sacramento/San Juaquin Rivers irrigating central California, and the Kootenai/Snake/Colombia River complex, irrigating the Inland Empire of central Washington and northeastern Oregon.
Having been involved in a ‘piping’ project ~ covering irrigation canals, piping them, to reclaim losses to evaporation ~ I think I’d like to see a better definition of ‘leak’ …
Ten Bears:
This comment is important; see below.
Ten Bears
how about we define leak as “holes in the pipe” and other losses as “other losses.”
then we can get on with fixing the leaks and worryig about other losses we can’t fix.
Did I ask you what you thought? Did I speak to you?
Ten Bears
you published what you thought on a public forum where back and forth is expected.
https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2023-02-10/Water-scarcity-Spain-s-new-drought-measures-threaten-mass-job-losses-1hjwF1AeZTa/index.html
February 10, 2023
Water scarcity: Spain’s new drought measures threaten mass job losses
By Ken Browne
Orihuela — Since 1980, Spain’s average available water has decreased by 12 percent and projections indicate that by 2050 there may be a further decrease of between 14 and 40 percent.
“We cannot guarantee water supply for drinking water or for economic uses by relying exclusively on rain,” said Spain’s minister for ecological transition Teresa Ribera recently.
The government has announced a new water management plan, but it has caused regional tensions with the farming community in the arid southeast which relies on the precious resource for their industry.
Economic ‘catastrophe’
One measure that the government is implementing is to raise the minimum flow of the River Tagus to protect its ecological future. The Tagus, known in Spanish as the Tajo and Portuguese as the Tejo, flows from a source in Aragon in northern Spain, past Madrid and through Portugal into the sea near Lisbon.
That measure, however, threatens the livelihood of thousands of people in the southeast of Spain who rely on agricultural products grown for export.
CGTN Europe traveled to what’s known as the ‘Garden of Europe’ to see the orange harvest in Orihuela where workers pick the fruit by hand. “This is a catastrophe for our local economy,” says Jose Vicente Andreu, president of the ASAJA farmers association in Alicante.
“Five thousand or more people would lose their jobs and a lot of families might have to change what they do for a living.”
Twenty-five thousand jobs at risk
The regional job losses across the Valencia, Murcia and Almeria regions could be even greater, with around 25,000 livelihoods under threat. The Tagus river has been supplying the Segura river with water since the 1930s via the Tagus-Segura Transfer – one of Spain’s largest ever hydraulic projects.
Water travels over 280 kilometers from the source via huge pipes and man made canals, allowing the drier southeast regions to grow crops for export. Oranges, strawberries, watermelons, peppers, lettuce, cucumbers, cauliflower, broccoli: more than 60 percent of all of Spain’s fruit and vegetable exports come from the region.
So why does the reduction in flow of the river affect farms and plots hundreds of kilometers away?
The issue is that the Tagus and its corresponding reservoir are only legally allowed to pump water to the Segura transfer when the water level is above a certain limit. But that limit has now been raised, which will reduce the water supply available for irrigation.
“This finca [ranch] will lose half its water,” says Andreu, as temporary workers from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia pile oranges into baskets around him. Most of the fruit is bound for export across the continent.
“Our work environment is really stressful right now, there’s a lot of anxiety,” he adds. “They haven’t thought about the effect this will have on the population of this area. We want them to take us into account and re-evaluate the decision.”
Twenty-five billion dollar water plan
The government’s plan is to supplement the shortfall with more efficient infrastructure and an increase in desalinated water. They have pledged nearly $25 billion nationwide to improve water management, also committing to water reuse and irrigation efficiency programs.
Andres Molina, the director of the Institute of Water at Alicante University, opposes the new government measure, saying that the motivation to reduce the water flow from the Tegus is more political than technical.
“The best solution is to keep things as they are regarding the flow limit in the Tagus. It’s all been well planned, and we can combine that with desalinated water,” he says. He adds that desalination plants use four times the energy than the Tagus-Segura water transfer currently does.
“Desalinated water is no substitute for the water transfer. Right now that’s not possible economically and ecologically speaking,” he says….
is this the “below” ltr directs ten bears to?
seems to be pointing out there are other considerations than defining “leak.’
and i wonder if we thought we could save the planet without some people losing their jobs. capitalism is supposed to create new and better jobs.
but only for new and better people i suppose.
oh, “save the planet” is a bit grandiose I suppose. how about “save the water for other people besides the ones complaining about losing their jobs.”
Kiara writes:
Water scarcity in the metropolitan area of Turin (Italy) is the result of climate change, weak government policy, and corruption.
[ This is clear and excellent, and should lend itself readily to a plan to strengthen water management government policy. This specific water scarcity problem should be intolerable if carefully described.
Nicely done.]
ltr:
Thank you for your constructive comment.
ltr
yes. nicely done. i am not so sure about “readily”. climate change is hard to fix and may already be past the point of no return…no full return. and human behavior is never easy to fix…politics, both personal and public is fraught with self deception, self interest, and the limitations of human intelligence.
Ten Bears says:
Having been involved in a ‘piping’ project ~ covering irrigation canals, piping them, to reclaim losses to evaporation ~ I think I’d like to see a better definition of ‘leak’ …
[ This is important.
I am “assuming” these are leaks due to poor infrastructure construction and maintenance. Public infrastructure spending in Spain is low, among developed nations. Relative spending on water infrastructure in Israel is far higher than in Spain. ]
and the limitations of what money can do, including the need for money to do other things.
i’d say something about the second law of thermodynamics, but that is too cutesy and maybe pretentious. lets just say if anything can go wrong it will.
no need for moral judgements…at least not always.
Along with Israel, which is heavily investing in water conservancy infrastructure, China is investing as heavily and assisting Israel in turn. Looking to water conservancy projects in China as well as in should be very helpful.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-10-09/China-built-largest-pumped-storage-power-plant-in-Israel-in-full-swing-1dZ5cnTAATK/index.html
October 9, 2022
China-built largest pumped storage power plant in Israel in full swing
The China-built 344-MW Kokhav Hayarden pumped storage hydropower plant, located near the city of Beit She’an and some 120 kilometers away from Tel Aviv, is expected to be the largest pumped storage power plant in Israel when it becomes operational in early 2023.
It will also become the lowest power plant of its kind in the world, as the powerhouse lies 275 meters below sea level, according to building contractor Power Construction Corporation of China (PCCC)….