Failing infrastructure, old pipes… The great waste of drinking water

Water suddenly gushing out of the road: a scene that has become almost commonplace in Italy. Every day, thousands of cubic meters of drinking water are wasted due to massive water leaks. Some evenings, the streets turn into torrents. The cause: failing infrastructure. In Italy, 157 liters of drinking water per inhabitant are wasted every day, twice as much as in France. Arietti, a small town in the center of the country, records 67% loss of drinking water each year, one of the worst scores in Italy.

That morning, the teams that manage the network were called by local residents, for a leak that occurred the day before. Half a liter of drinking water escapes every second. “We do this type of intervention ten to 15 times a day.”says Gianluca Faraglia, engineer responsible for the APS (Acqua Publica Sabina) water network. According to estimates, 60% of Italian pipelines are over 30 years old. Sometimes the network is much older, and sometimes not maintained for decades. Often, the only solution is to change the manager, in particular by moving from public to private.