It took nine years of work, from 1906 to 1915, for water to reach Bari. Another nine years for it to reach Foggia, and twelve to reach the far tip of Salento.
A few figures suffice to gauge the importance of Acquedotto Pugliese today. The water network extends 20,000 kilometers (30 times the length of the Po River) and serves more than four million people.
A few more numbers: 5 water purification plants, 328 tanks with a storage capacity of three million cubic meters.
How do you achieve such a large supply?
First and foremost, with the Sele and Calore springs.
From these, the Main Canal begins, the historic backbone of the entire water system. However, the water flowing in the conduits of the Aqueduct isn't made up solely of springs. Over the decades, the primary sources have proven less capable of meeting the growing demand, hence the need to resort to reservoirs, which today provide two-thirds of the total flow of the Apulian water system. While spring water can be consumed as it emerges, the waters from the reservoirs require sophisticated and high-technology purification processes.
A subsequent stage is represented by the so-called water nodes, which are convergence points of supply and distribution pipelines that collect and distribute the flow to and from various destinations.
The long journey of water does not end in our homes. From there, through a complex sewage system (over 12,000 kilometers of managed network), the wastewater from homes is collected at treatment plants where, after a thorough process of purification and sanitization, it is finally returned to the environment.