If you suffer from vertigo it is best to stay at home. At least forget the provincial 115, the one that for long stretches runs alongside the most powerful river of the Nuraghi Island, the Flumendosa. Woe to climb these narrow streets dug by time and neglect, more holes than asphalt. The gaze on the side of the stream cuts off the coronary arteries and takes your breath away. The American canyons are walks in the presence of these vertical walls of pitch-black rock where the second river of the island unfolds, after the Tirso.

Devil's boar

These are the deep gorges of the "Devil's Boar", those narrated by Captain Emilio Lussu in his most mythological tales about hunting trips on Monte Cardiga, between Flumendosa and Sarcidano. Raging waters, 22 cubic meters per second at the mouth, indomitable when the force of the valley becomes "full" irascible and powerful, capable of overwhelming any obstacle along its path. To fully understand the deep soul of this stream, its roots in this land of shepherds and hunters, of an untouched and suggestive nature, one must see the hunting notes of the young captain of the rossomori. The tale is epic.

Conversion on horseback

The Flumendosa is in full swing, says Lussu, «you can only go on horseback, excellent swimmer… I took the pleasure of such a test in 1913, at the age of twenty-three. ... I persuaded to come with me, on my back, the elementary school teacher of the village, my old teacher, great hunter, patrician. He was a pagan. In his house he had a bust of Julian the Apostate. Eaters and priest eaters. It had been the terror of the parish. With him on my back, I faced the Flumendosa, with ten meters of water depth. The horse was vigorous, but the current even more so, and it drove us downstream. The teacher was seized by panic and believed himself in the last hour. He made the sign of the cross and invoked Jesus and Mary. The horse, after great efforts, managed to take us to the other side, two hundred meters downstream. The teacher came out of that accident transformed and the next day went to Mass. Unlike Paul of Tarsus, who passed to Christianity by falling from his horse, my teacher converted by remaining in the saddle ».

127 km of river

A rush of water along one hundred and twenty-seven kilometers, from the slopes of Punta La Marmora, 1215 meters above sea level, on the Gennargentu, passing through Arzana, stopping for the first time in Lake Bau Muggeris, the lake of Flumendosa Alto, and follow, then, on that overhanging riverbed passing through Aritzo, Nurri and Orroli, Esterzili, Armungia up to Villaputzu. It is no coincidence that the Royal Decree 498 of 1946 established the Autonomous Body of Flumendosa, the EAF. The goal, even then, was to regiment the hydrographic basin of the Middle and Lower Flumendosa, to irrigate the fields, provide drinking water and produce motive power, or electricity. The undertaking was impressive. In the end, not only water flowed from the dams on the Flumendosa and on the Mulargia, but hydroelectric power plants capable of generating motive power to be fed into the network were also built.

The "electric" river

Three electricity generation stations were built on the river with the largest flow on the island: "Flumendosa First jump" with a potential of 7.8 megawatts, "Flumendosa Second jump", with 28.2 megawatts, up to the third jump on the dam Sa Teula of 9.6 megawatts. Not a lot, 45 megawatts in all, but enough to understand that that water was also important in terms of energy. Arriving on the slopes of the red giant, that Nuraghe Arrubiu that stands out magnificently on the horizon of the Orroli plateau, means tackling steep hairpin bends and continuous mobile obstacles, flocks and herds that command traffic here and beyond.

From the Seine to Orroli

Yet, in this land of daring pastures, the Cooperative Unione Pastori di Nurri is an economic power, someone who has come from afar has seen fit to plan a new foreign landing in the land of Sardinia. It will not have been easy to get there crossing the Seine and the Tyrrhenian, but certainly the gentlemen who came from Paris were not looking for strong emotions. The tips on energy affairs, however, sometimes lead to long journeys. Very often, you take more in favor of foreigners than the interests of the island. This is how the French energy giant, Électricité de France, for all the EDF, has seen well, through its Italian subsidiary, Edison, to emulate the colonial spirit of Spaniards, Norwegians, Swiss, Danes and even Americans, all intent on conquering wind, sun and now even the water of Sardinia in order to activate that perpetual whirlwind of incentives and public resources that revolve around renewable energy.

Blitz from beyond the Alps

Without saying anything to anyone, without knocking or knocking on the doors of the municipalities, much less, until proven otherwise, to the official ones of the Region, the energy lords from Paris presented a plan for the construction of the "Devil's Boar" in the canyons. a «hydroelectric storage system using highly flexible pumping». Documents classified as "administrative verification". The protocol date is that of July 4th with a single cartographic reference contained in the name already attributed to the snatching of water: "Taccu sa Pruna". Not easy to identify, in the magnum sea of toponyms that chase each other in the many streams and tributaries of the Flumendosa. If you ask the shepherd-roadman who regulates the traffic of flocks on the side of Esterzili, he gives you a simple indication: he is not on this side. And, in fact, to find it you have to travel another ten kilometers in the dark, where the only references are the sheepfolds interconnected with the asphalt.

Military map

The only map that helps you is the military one, the one that the Geographical Institute has meticulously compiled with every lavish reconstruction of watercourses, even the most minute, and all the level curves necessary to trace the perpendiculars functional to the exploitation of the water resource. "Taccu sa Pruna" coincidentally is mapped as a country road, from the roadside, the provincial 115, up to the banks of the dam on the Flumendosa, practically the reservoir upstream, barrier of Nuraghe Arrubiu, over 299 million cubic meters of capacity , above Lake Mulargia, another 332 million cubic meters. A mountain of water, an upstream part and a valley.

From the Eiffel Tower to Esterzili

The ideal for hydroelectric given the "jump" of water of hundreds of meters that is generated from one level to another. The French, therefore, did not see the horizon from the Eiffel Tower, to reach the bends of Esterzili. Certainly they had an important "tip-off", considering that the Sardinian hydroelectric system, after the strategic vision of the early years of the last century, has settled on the nationalization of energy, with Enel always striving to do and undo on the subject electric.

The silence on Taccu sa Pruna

The Edison Edf-branded project, however, is shrouded in an embarrassing silence given that the Ministry of Ecological Transition for the past 50 days has been obscuring those plans for the French colonization of the waters of the Flumendosa destined to create "the Accumulation Plant Hydroelectric by highly flexible pumping "on the mountains between Esterzili, Orroli, with the involvement of the territories of Escolca, Serri, Mandas, Gergei, Nurri, probably due to the positioning of other wind turbines and photovoltaic expanses, as if those that already disfigure were not enough and snatch the ridges of this exclusive landscape.

Get on and off

In practice, the "up and down" of the water, the charge and discharge, from a basin downstream to one upstream and vice versa, has the aim of generating two effects: producing energy when needed, making the water go downstream positioned in the upper reservoir, generating, therefore, driving force and consequently energy, and using the surplus of energy, for example wind and renewable energy, to revive upstream the water that has reached the valley following the swirl, the whirling descent of the resource water to produce energy. All this with machinery that the French predict of the latest generation. Terna, the electricity transmission arm of the state, should manage the “up and down” water regulatory system. The Region, which would have the ownership both for the competence on water and energy resources, has developed only a plan for hydroelectric self-production functional to reduce the energy costs of the multisectoral water system. He has provided design assignments for ten mini-hydroelectric plants. For the moment there is only the money for the projects. Among the planned installations, however, there is no “Taccu sa Pruna”, that is what the French want to do. The lords of water in the land of the Devil's Boar.

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