Despite being surrounded by the sea, and despite the increasingly frequent problems of water scarcity that afflict agriculture, Italy has so far not invested as much as it could on the development of desalinators. This is demonstrated not so much by comparison with Middle Eastern countries - where for obvious geographical and climatic reasons this water withdrawal system has been the prevailing solution for years - as by comparison with a neighboring and similar country such as Spain, the world's fourth-largest freshwater production nation from salt water, with 765 plants that in total produce more than 5 million cubic meters of desalinated water every day. Of these, 99 are large-capacity infrastructures, that is, capable of producing 10 thousand to 250 thousand cubic meters of water per day. As a matter of fact, Italy's largest desalinator in operation to date is the one (for industrial use) at Saras' Sarlux refinery in Sarroch, Sardinia, built by Acciona itself in just 9 months and commissioned in 2018, whose capacity is just 12 thousand cubic meters per day. In 2006, the one (for potable use) in Reggio Calabria had come into operation, with a capacity of 18 thousand cubic meters, but today the plant is at a standstill. Similarly, the vast majority (80 percent) of the 40 or so desalination plants currently present in Tuscany, Lazio, Puglia, Sicily and Sardinia, all of which are small to medium size, are currently not operating. Their total production capacity of 17.8 million cubic meters per year is therefore entirely theoretical. Now things could change thanks to measures introduced by the recent Drought Decree, including the appointment of an extraordinary commissioner for the water emergency, Nicola Dell'Acqua, and the approval of regulations that simplify the authorization processes for the construction of desalinators.
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