Italy waterways in ‘critical state’ from drought, says authority

CASTELVETRO PIACENTINO, Italy - Several waterways in northern Italy are in a “critical state” owing to drought, and the weather forecast bodes ill for the coming days, the Po River Authority said July 3.

“The grip of drought continues to tighten on northern Italy,” the institution monitoring Italy’s longest river said in a statement.

Light rainfall brought a drop in temperatures on July 1 and July 2 but the authority said that measures such as limiting irrigation would be required if there was no more rain.

The body said that Lake Maggiore at the foot of the Italian Alps was receding by 4cm a day and was now only 48 per cent full.

In Piedmont, “the waterways are suffering, and difficulties are being recorded in the agricultural sector, which is forced to make choices about which crops to bring to production”, the authority said.

Near Cremona, in the middle of the plain, part of the Po riverbed was dry on July 3, and sandbanks were increasingly visible, an AFP journalist saw.

The river’s flow was 278 cu m per second on July 1, compared with an average of 929 cu m on that date between 1991 and 2020.

In the Po delta, saltwater from the Adriatic Sea has now travelled 25km up the river, partly preventing irrigation of the fields.

The Veneto region declared a state of emergency owing to drought on July 2.

The heatwave that has swept across Europe would have been virtually impossible in June without climate change, according to climatologists from World Weather Attribution.

All-time temperature records have been broken in northern Italy, Germany, Poland, and Slovakia, and records for the month of June have been set in France, Britain and Switzerland.

This heatwave has caused thousands of excess deaths in Europe, according to estimates in France, Spain and Belgium.

It would have been “virtually impossible” in June without climate change, the World Weather Attribution group of scientists said. AFP