With the locusts, the cicadas have returned to central Sardinia. One scourge leads to another. In one of the driest seasons in history - and today we "celebrate" World Water Day - someone allows himself the luxury of throwing into the sea, from the Tirso dam, two cubic meters of water per second (two thousand litres), 120 per minute, 7,200 per hour, 172,800 per day, one million 200 thousand cubic meters per week. Just to clarify, the waste corresponds more or less to the consumption in a month of the city of Cagliari. Who manages the Tirso tap? Enas, the water authority of Sardinia. Who controls Enas? The region.

On 23 January 1997, the President of the Republic Oscar Luigi Scalfaro inaugurated the Cantoniera dam in Busachi (it sounds more elegant with the second name, Eleonora d'Arborea), a wall of almost one hundred meters raised to harness 800 million cubic meters of water . In a climate of silence and resignation (in the face of a perverse testing mechanism imposed by a timeless state law), the large dam has an "authorized" reservoir volume of 419 million. Thanks to the rains at the beginning of March, which swelled the Tirso and its tributaries, the dam reached its maximum quota about a fortnight ago. And so, since then, every extra liter that heaven has given us ends up downstream and then straight towards the mouth, in Cabras. With all due respect to guilt.

Even more so if we consider that, thanks to a happy intuition, in the past a connection was created between the Tirso and Flumendosa water systems (now in difficulty). It's a shame that the water doesn't end up there due to a fall or a trick of the slopes. You need a pumping station, a bit like the autoclave at home. The ones who loudly denounced the waste were Anbi Sardegna (the association that brings together the reclamation consortia) and Coldiretti. Why - they ask - doesn't the lifting station turn on? Why aren't the social and economic consequences of waste also taken into account with energy costs? Many Sardinians already live with the restrictions, in many places (including the Flumendosa basin) there is no water for the fields where, just to remind you, food (our food) is produced and not gaseous. Who takes responsibility, even morally, for a waste that smacks of shame? Enas has decided (hurray!) to show its face with a press release. The summary: we don't have the money. And, again, we act (literally) «in accordance with legal provisions, often unexpectedly classified as "bureaucratic quibbles", taking care to implement the provisions given by the basin authority, which acts to protect the entire community and according to the rules given by the law, upon reading which it is necessary to satisfy the needs for domestic use as a priority, followed by industrial and irrigation needs". Thank you, Enas. We heard what we wanted to hear: it's a screw-on system. They are all children of the same mother, the Region. The Sardinian water authority quantifies the bill costs for the Tirso autoclave at 5.5 million - in one year. Enas says nothing (after all, it's not his job) about how much those two cubic meters per second thrown away cost the community. But the message is loud and clear: let politics put the money into it. It is useless to cry over the spilled water and over the serious, unacceptable errors committed so far by those who administer us. The Tirso pumping station is ready for use. Maybe it will be put into operation for a month (500 thousand euros?), perhaps less, it will depend on the generosity of the good Lord in this spring which, already at the beginning, tastes like summer. There are those who can decide that that autoclave should be put into operation immediately. Let's think about it: while reading this reflection, six thousand liters of water flew away. Yes, it's a shame.