Water: experts, 150 days without rains and droughts in Italy

(ANSA) - ROME, FEBRUARY 23 - Drought is alarming in Italy, due to the negative trend (probably worse than 2016-2017) in rainfall in recent months.

We have gone from 40 to over 150 days a year without rain, while the extreme heat on 11 August passed the Syracusan peak, never touched, of 48.8 degrees centigrade.

From the Po to the Tiber district, the rivers are experiencing a very serious crisis of resources, while in the South and on the islands the increase in dry areas is now constant as is the water level.

The sos was launched in the "Technological Sapiens" meeting between the head of civil protection Fabrizio Curcio and the top experts in climate, water, agriculture and technologies.

The National Association of Land Reclamation Consortia (Anbi), sweaty Cnr, has projected the "risk of drying out on 70% of the available agricultural soils of Sicily, 58% of Molise, 57% of Puglia, 55% of Basilicata, between 30% and 50% of Sardinia, Marche, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, Abruzzo and Campania, and smaller shares in the other regions ".

The agricultural or former agricultural areas from red alert, it has been underlined, are today between Agrigento, Syracuse, ReggioCalabria, Potenza, Bari, Foggia, Sassari.

In 2021 in Sicily there were 140 consecutive days without rain (plain of Catania), in general in Italy the periods of drought passed, on average, from 40 to over 150 days a year, while the extreme heat on 11 August last reached in siracusanola peak never touched of 48.8 degrees centigrade.

Fabrizio Curcio, head of the Civil Protection Department, warned that in Italy it is urgent to intervene on "forecasting, prevention and management of the water emergency", "water supply systems must be implemented based on a combination of infrastructural interventions in the medium / long term (reduction network losses, plant efficiency, increase in interconnections, construction of new infrastructures, small reservoirs) ".

(HANDLE).