Water torture

I can hardly bring myself to write any more about the dire water situation in Italy.  We had some hope recently when we heard that Acea were actually starting work.  It took only a few days for them to install the new supply pipe to the top of our road, during which time no one bothered to check the work or that the supply was the correct size, we simply received photographs that told us nothing.

Then Mario reported that he had spoken to the contractors who said they were installing only 3 meter points and of course we discovered the missing one was ours.  By this stage we had applied 5 times for a connection, 5 times our application had been cancelled without notification, we applied again yesterday.  Meantime the neighbours are getting irate as if we are doing this on purpose.  We can do nothing until we receive an estimate for the connection which is also the contract with the necessary document to make a payment.   No one helps us,  we raised a complaint against Acea because they were failing to respond within the time scale of their own service statement, in fact failing to respond at all, a neighbour told us to stop complaining to Acea as if it’s any of her business.

Then we were told the 4 pipes in our road, that will cost us another 1,000 euro on top of the 4,000 already paid last November, would go down to the chamber beyond our property where we could link into the old pipe to run the supply back up under the road to our property.  We have explained the existing pipe cannot be used as it has a leak that we cannot find under the road.  We were told there are no leaks under the road, which is nonsense.  We fixed one leak last year and there are visible repairs we’ve made over the years and patched the asphalt.

MrFF has 3 times sent to the neighbours a scale drawing he prepared of our proposal to bring all the pipes down the road and t off to each property.  Apparently no one has even looked at his drawing though one neighbour said it would be expensive, presumably through some super power.

Then yesterday MrFF received a really abusive email from a neighbour saying it was alright for us as we are retired but she has a job and a family and cannot be doing with our interference.  I am furious that she makes assumptions about our life, she has no idea of our obligations and pressures. She went on to say we can do what we like but the pipes are going in next week and if we connect later we better not damage theirs.  She suggested we jump on a flight and sort things out, presumably she wants us to live in a hotel until we have water.

I am distraught, I feel constantly tense and neither of us is sleeping.  We want to get back to finish work on our terrace, we want to see our cats.  We knew when we paid up for this hair brained project it was a recipe for disaster but we could find no alternative.  I’ve said it before, there is no wonder Italy is full of abandoned houses that the government tries to sell off for a euro, some days I’d happily take a euro for ours just to be free of the stress.  If you are interested you also have to take good care of our cats and put up with some unpleasant neighbours who fortunately are not always in residence.