Rainfall in Italy this winter has been so low that lakes in the north are recording summer-level water levels. Farmers fear they could run out of water as early as July.
22 March marks the World Water Day. Yet there is little to celebrate. At the start of spring, we can say it: the winter just gone will be remembered as one of the driest in recent decades. And it is above all the lakes and rivers of northern Italy that are heading into the warm season bearing the consequences, in the form of serious water shortages.
Once again the effects of climate change are visible through atmospheric anomalies. Precipitation over the winter months has halved: whereas in October Italy recorded 80 per cent more rainfall than average, by March we are at 40 per cent below, with temperatures 1.4 degrees above the norm. There is very little snow covering the mountains and a drought alarm has been triggered across the north, driven by a particularly dry February: one need only look at the water levels of the Po and of the three great lakes of northern Italy (Maggiore, Como and Iseo), which are below the seasonal average and dangerously close to the levels typically recorded in the summer months. As Anbi (Associazione nazionale consorzi di bonifica) points out, Lake Maggiore is among the most critical cases, with a water level equal to less than 20 per cent of the reservoir's total capacity.
How can this be remedied? "For years, geologists have been reiterating the importance of a prevention logic to anticipate and avert potential emergency phases. The management of water resources, including underground ones, must, in times of abundance, build up reserves for the sudden and frequent periods of drought," says Arcangelo Francesco Violo, national secretary and coordinator of the Water Resources commission of the National Council of Geologists. "Where in some areas it may still be possible to consider surface basins, in many others it is the subsoil that must serve as a reservoir, both by meeting different needs through the most suitable aquifer systems according to water quality, and by being used as the most natural of water reserves."
So, while on the one hand it is important to have methods for retaining water within the territory for as long as possible, slowing its runoff and reducing soil sealing, on the other hand Violo warns that it is important to act with a view to "adapting to climate change" by intervening in "hydrogeological planning".
Yet rather than planning, it is a climate of emergency that prevails in Italy. Such is the case in Piedmont: according to the regional Arpa, in February 2019 an average of 31 millimetres of rain was recorded across the entire Po river basin, concentrated solely on 1 and 2 February. That represents 56 per cent less than the monthly average, while from the start of 2019 the negative figure stands at over 60 per cent. Arpa states that this is the sixth driest winter in the past 60 years.
The risk is of finding oneself without water by July, so much so that irrigation consortia in the Vercelli area are concerned that this year rice will not complete its production cycle: the relevant bodies have therefore advised farmers to return to manual irrigation and to revise their cultivation methods. In particular, they are being asked to abandon the dry-seeding technique, which has been widely adopted by farmers because it allows them to manage the early stages of the rice crop more easily, but which requires the supply aquifers to be recharged in June, when water will be scarce.
