As Po dries up, Italy’s food, energy supplies are at risk
BORETTO, ITALY » Water is so low in large stretches of Italy’s largest river that local residents are walking through the middle of the expanse of sand and shipwrecks are resurfacing.
Authorities fear that if it doesn’t rain soon, there’ll be a serious shortage of water for drinking and irrigation for farmers and local populations across the whole of northern Italy.
In a park near the central northern village of Gualtieri, cyclists and hikers stop in curiosity to observe the Zibello, a 50-meter long (164 feet) barge that transported wood during the second world war but sank in 1943. It is normally covered by the Po’s waters.
“It’s the first time that we can see this barge,” said amateur cyclist Raffaele Vezzali as he got off the pedals to stare at the rusted ship. Vezzali was only partially surprised, though, as he knew that the lack of winter rain caused the river to reach record low levels.
But the curiosities of a resurfaced wartime boat and wide sandy beaches do little to mask the disruption this will cause for local residents and farmers. The drying up of the Po, which runs 405 miles from the northwestern city of Turin to Venice, is jeopardizing drinking water in Italy’s densely populated and highly industrialized districts and threatening irrigation in the most intensively farmed part of the country, known as the Italian food valley.
Northern Italy hasn’t seen rainfall for more than 110 days and this year’s snowfall is down by 70%. Aquifers, which hold groundwater, are depleted. Temperatures of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above season average are melting the tiny snowfields and glaciers that were left on the top of the surrounding Alps, leaving the Po basin without its summer water reservoirs.
All these factors are triggering the worst drought in 70 years, according to the Po River Basin Authority.
“We are in a situation where the river flow is approximately 80,000 gallons per second here in (the riverside village of) Boretto, while normally in this area we have almost 1800 (cubic meters, 476,000 gallons),” explained Meuccio Berselli, secretary general of the Po River Basin Authority.
The authority is constantly monitoring the river flow but there is very little hope that weather will help. The downpours that occurred in the month of June were extreme but highly localized and weren’t absorbed by the land and didn’t reach the Po and its aquifers.