The sale to private investors of 40% of Talete, the public company that manages the water supply in Tuscia, and thus one of our most precious common resources—water, seems inevitable. The private shareholders will be identified through a tender process entrusted “with a view to greater transparency” to Invitalia, a company owned by the Treasury (for a summary of the situation and the mechanisms at work, see the article of the “Non ce la beviamo” committee).
Two years of manoeuvring, negotiations, and pressure, lacking any transparency and without the slightest involvement of the citizens – who should have been protagonists in deciding the future of their common good. The resource now passes under the effective control of “an industrial partner capable of guaranteeing financial resources and management expertise”—a solution strongly supported by the President of the Province, Alessandro Romoli, and the director of Talete, Salvatore Genova.
We are under no illusions about the consequences of private management of public water: the goal of private investors is precisely to increase private wealth, not to protect an essential common good. We discussed this in a post two years ago.
The lake is at risk in this intricate political and economic game, because the volume of water in the lake’s aquifer is decreasing due to excessive, uncontrolled, and often irregular withdrawals; and we already have to replenish our supplies with water from the Amiata springs (are these the ones ACEA is craving?). This shortage in resources leads to quantitative and health problems that would be exacerbated by possible water diversions into Rome’s crumbling distribution networks.
Unfortunately, water is not the only common good being sold, alienated, degraded, and abandoned — there’s Lake Bolsena itself, which long years of neglect have led to eutrophication (we’ll discuss this in a future post), its natural heritage without defence against the prevalence of private interests, and precious natural spaces occupied by energy speculation…
It’s easy to point the finger at the perpetrators of this devastation, who follow their own political, economic, and private agendas. But let’s not forget our responsibilities as citizens to defend our common goods. Responsibility and power – let us remember this July 14th that we can be “citoyens” who take their destiny into their own hands and change history!
