(ANSA) - BOLOGNA, 15 JUN - The drought situation "is worsening": "in some areas it hasn't rained for 110 days" and in dozens of municipalities in Piedmont and Lombardy "tankers for water supply are already in operation because local reservoirs refer to sources that no longer exist ".
So to ANSA Meuccio Berselli, secretary general of the Po River District Authority - Ministry of Ecological Transition (AdPo-MiTe), after the alarm already raised in recent days by the Observatory on drought, which will meet again on Tuesday 21 June.
Last week Utilitalia, representing the multi-utility of the integrated water service, made a presentation that it had asked the mayors of a hundred municipalities in Piedmont and 25 in Lombardy (in the Bergamo area) to suspend water at night, to replenish the levels of the tanks.
Well, in many of these the ordinances are already there, Berselli underlines: "the rationing of water for drinking water is already there".
The other side that worries is the Ferrara area and, to a lesser extent, the Romagna.
"In the Ferrara area, a basin of about 250 thousand people, we asked to take as little water as possible".
About 300 thousand are the people who instead belong to the water purifiers of Romagna, "at the moment more fortunate because the water arrives from the Ridracoli dam which has stored good supplies in the autumn".
There is already rationing in agriculture, a sector that has "exploded", he adds, "where we ask to withdraw less than they need, to allow for a minimum vital outflow of water", despite this being the period in which there would be the greatest need for water. to bring the crops to maturity.
We are in a "perfect storm, we have never seen a year like this": "the snow on the Alps has completely disappeared, glaciers running out, temperatures higher than average, scarce rains, hot ventilation that dries the soils ...".
"The Po - concludes Berelli - had not had such a low flow for 70 years, but the truth is that we will see it even lower".
(HANDLE).
