Everyone agrees on the severity of the drought, but they don’t agree on how to deal with it. After the declaration of a state of emergency in Lombardy last Saturday, Piedmont, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia are also preparing regional plans to tackle the water crisis. That of Emilia-Romagna is already ready, but the president Stefano Bonaccini has asked for the declaration of a state of emergency at the national level.
For its part, the government has made it known that the regional plans could have the green light as early as Monday, and this would allow the rapid reimbursement of the costs for the measures necessary to guarantee water where there is no water, such as the use of tankers. . For the “drought decree”, which the government is working on, it could take another two weeks, but the draft circulating on the tables of the ministries involved and the regions concerned (the northern ones and Umbria) provides for the appointment of an extraordinary commissioner who in an emergency it would operate through ordinances.
While waiting for a common line, we proceed in no particular order. There are hundreds of municipalities in northern and central Italy that have already prepared water rationing. Among these are Milan, where it is forbidden to collect water for lawns, wash cars and fill swimming pools. Lombardy has asked Trentino for five million cubic meters of water to irrigate the fields, and the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano have also increased the flow of the Adige to get more water to Veneto.
The Po is the thermometer of the crisis. Thanks to the rains of recent days in the north, the flow in Pontelagoscuro has grown to 200 cubic meters per second, while remaining well below the guard threshold, which is set at 450 to counteract the rise of the “saline wedge”: the advance of the sea for 30 kilometers towards the hinterland, which set a historical record, putting at risk the availability of drinking water for about 800 thousand people. The river level is so low that in addition to crops, clams and mussels raised in the river delta are choking. To safeguard the Po, the basin authority has once again recommended reducing the withdrawals for agricultural purposes by 20 per cent and increasing the releases from the Alpine lakes towards the river by the same percentage.
Meanwhile, the drought is also worsening in the center. In Tuscany, about 90 percent of the territory is in conditions of “extreme drought”, explains the National Association for land reclamation, irrigation and land improvements (Anbi), and rivers such as Bisenzio and Ombrone “are reduced to streams”. A situation similar to that of the Tiber, which in some places “seems swampy, with still water”, denounces the Basin Authority. Drinking water is not yet in question, but after the limitations on the production of hydroelectricity, the situation is increasingly serious for agriculture. Coldiretti has estimated the damages caused to the sector at three billion euros, losses destined to grow by the end of the summer. For this reason, the Minister of Agriculture Stefano Patuanelli stressed the need to establish a refreshment plan for companies, recalling that in the Recovery and Resilience Plan (Pnrr) 1.3 billion are foreseen to expand the agricultural irrigation system and enhance infrastructures. . Prime Minister Mario Draghi also spoke of the need to prepare a “great plan for water”, for which four billion of the NRP have already been allocated. In both cases, these are structural measures, with visible long-term effects: the only solution for drought in the short term is rain, which for now, however, is not seen.