5. Water
Seasonal Demand, Wastewater and Destination Resilience
Water resilience depends on more than reservoir storage. It includes the condition of distribution networks, the reliability of supply, demand management, drinking-water quality, wastewater collection and treatment, drought preparedness, environmental flows and the capacity to respond when systems come under stress.
For Sardinia, this is directly relevant to tourism because visitor demand is strongly seasonal and often concentrated in coastal areas. During the summer, accommodation, restaurants, holiday homes, marinas, public beaches and local services can increase water and wastewater loads at the same time as rainfall is limited, temperatures are high and ecosystems face their greatest water stress.
The drought conditions evident across 2024 and 2025 illustrate the importance of long-term planning. At 31 January 2025, the Regional Basin Authority reported that Sardinia’s artificial reservoirs held 906 million cubic metres, equivalent to 49.7% of authorised storage capacity. This represented an improvement from the 41.1% recorded at the end of 2024, but the island-wide drought indicator remained in the “danger” or “alert” condition.[unionesarda]
These figures should not be used to imply that every destination or water system faces the same level of risk. Water conditions vary between basins, utilities and municipalities. Their destination-management relevance lies in demonstrating that peak tourism demand must be planned within a climate-sensitive resource system rather than treated as an unlimited external supply.
Distribution efficiency is equally important. National ISTAT reporting shows that total losses in Italian public water-supply networks averaged 42.4% in 2022; water utilities averaged 41.9%, while systems directly operated by municipalities or local entities averaged 45.5%. These are national figures, not a Sardinia-specific loss rate. They should therefore not be presented as Sardinian performance data. They do, however, illustrate why local network-loss data are essential for a credible destination water strategy.[istat]
Abbanoa, the principal integrated water-service manager in Sardinia, reports approximately 12,000 water-quality samples each year, examining around 315,000 chemical and bacteriological parameters throughout the supply chain. The scale of monitoring is important for drinking-water safety; it does not, by itself, provide a public, destination-level picture of seasonal supply security, leakage, consumption or wastewater-treatment capacity in individual tourism localities.[abbanoa]
| Water-management priority | Why it matters for the visitor economy | Evidence needed |
|---|---|---|
| Seasonal demand monitoring | Annual averages can conceal short peak periods of high consumption | Monthly or daily supply and consumption by municipality and accommodation zone |
| Network-loss reduction | Avoidable leakage reduces resilience and increases operating costs | Local water-balance, pressure-management and repair data |
| Drinking-water quality | Essential for health, public confidence and accommodation operations | Utility and health-authority compliance monitoring |
| Wastewater capacity | Peak loads can affect treatment performance and coastal-water quality | Plant capacity, seasonal flow, overflow and compliance data |
| Water-efficient accommodation | Hotels, rentals, campsites and restaurants can reduce avoidable demand | Metered consumption per guest-night and efficiency measures |
| Ecosystem water needs | Wetlands, rivers, aquifers and coastal ecosystems depend on water quantity and quality | Environmental-flow, groundwater and wetland-condition monitoring |
| Drought-response protocols | Clear thresholds reduce emergency disruption | Agreed trigger levels, public communication and contingency plans |
A destination-water strategy should avoid two errors. The first is to rely entirely on new supply infrastructure without reducing losses or demand. The second is to place responsibility solely on visitors and accommodation providers while ignoring network performance, planning decisions and public-system capacity.
The appropriate approach is shared responsibility. Utilities and public authorities need transparent data, investment and contingency planning. Municipalities need to align accommodation growth and land use with water and wastewater capacity. Tourism businesses need to monitor consumption, repair leaks, use efficient equipment and communicate responsibly with guests. Visitors need clear, practical information that makes lower-consumption behaviour easy rather than merely symbolic.
The principal data gap is the lack of consistently published, tourism-attributable water and wastewater data at municipal or destination level. Sardinia should consider reporting, at minimum, seasonal per-capita consumption, accommodation consumption per guest-night, network losses, water-restriction days, wastewater-treatment capacity and compliance, and the condition of water-dependent ecosystems.
Such a framework would enable tourism growth to be assessed against real resource conditions. It would shift water from being an invisible input to becoming a measurable part of destination resilience and long-term value.