Liquid Labyrinths: Water Services Among Reforms, Counter-Reforms, Rulings and Referendum

In the last decades, water resources have been regulated in Italy through different legislative acts that have drawn a picture in which shadows and uncertainties prevail. Apart from innovative and pioneering laws, sometimes anticipating some of the ones approved at the European level and result of a shared vision and a common effort toward the coordination of different levels of water governance, a labyrinth of norms beside a knot of administrative bodies constitutes the present scenario. This article recalls the main principles and reforms which have marked the water sector in Italy since the last decade of the past century and leads the reader throughout «a liquid labyrinth» of stratified norms, referendum and rulings, identifying the existing institutional lacks and suggesting possible guidelines for the current reforming process.