The mastermind behind the historic operation that allowed the Region of Sardinia to keep water public on the island is Tuscan. He is 66-year-old Giuseppe Sardu, with a long career in both the private sector and public administration. As his surname testifies, Sardu is indeed originally from Sardinia (from Cuglieri, in the province of Oristano), but for some time he has been considered and considers himself a Pisano.
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He arrived in the shadow of the Tower in 1979, when he enrolled at the University where he later graduated in Computer Science. In the past, he held various roles at the Municipality of Pisa (as councilor for Personnel, Public Works, Urban Planning, and Private Building), was president of the Ato from 2000 to 2004, led the company Acque spa from 2011 to 2020, and until a few months ago was general manager of the Cna of Pisa. Returning to Sardinia, his name is and will remain linked to the experience of Abbanoa spa, whose presidency Sardu was elected to (with 96.62% of the votes) in September 2024, immediately after the election of Alessandra Todde as president of the Region. His mandate as head of the public company managing the integrated water service in Sardinia (handling water purification, distribution, sewers, and treatment for over 370 Sardinian municipalities) was very clear: to reorganize the company across the entire territory and protect public water from the risks of privatization.
A goal fully achieved a few weeks ago, when, following the agreement signed in mid-2026, the privatization of the water service was definitively blocked, avoiding an international tender. The key moment was a “PagoPa” bulletin showing the amount of over 231 million (231,300,094 euros to be exact), the sum with which Abbanoa spa repaid the Autonomous Region of Sardinia the state aid granted in 2013 plus interest. “At the invitation of a person close to Avs, aware that I was no longer president of Acque spa,” Sardu recalls, “I decided to participate in the call for Abbanoa, without knowing Todde herself, an employee, or a mayor. When I received the call, I was on vacation, in front of the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, in Hanoi, Vietnam. Subsequently, my curriculum was deemed valid and I was elected, almost unanimously, on September 17, 2024. The task before me was quite challenging: it was necessary to avoid the international tender for the concession of water service management to third parties. The only solution could be to commit to repaying the state aid previously received to free ourselves from the attached conditions, including the international tender. According to European Union rules, however, we could not just repay the state aid but also all the “compound” interest (that is, earnings calculated both on the initial money and on previously accumulated interest), for a final amount of about 231 million.”
With the repayment completed, Abbanoa and Sardu managed to frame the major operation without compromising operations, without raising tariffs, and without reducing investments. And management remains entirely public, with Sardinian municipalities now set to hold about 86% of the share capital, further strengthening public control over the company. Sardu, who in the Abbanoa challenge was assisted by the consultancy of two other well-known managers in Tuscany and the province of Pisa (the former director of the Pisa Industrial Association Carlo Frighetto and the chartered accountant Alberto Lang, former vice president of the then Cassa di Risparmio di San Miniato), cannot be asked for some tips on public water resource management.
“In Tuscany,” says Sardu, “they don’t need advice; they are perfectly capable of managing water publicly. They have everything they need: skills, technologies, and resources. The perspective can only be this, which also coincides with what the president of the Region Eugenio Giani has always maintained: water management must remain public in the future as well. I absolutely do not believe in so-called multiutilities. Perhaps it would be appropriate to think of a “Sardinia model” also for Tuscany: one Region, one area, one manager, and one regional infrastructure company. It would be useful to design management that does not only deal with water distribution and treatment. In other words, a large entity is needed that looks more generally at the “water” resource at the regional level, including large infrastructures, new reservoirs, connections between areas, protection of aquifers, and reuse of treated water, a topic always very central but where Tuscany is behind. Having the possibility to use a lot of good water in agriculture would indeed be decisive.”
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