"Three more weeks and there will be no more water for agriculture in the Centre-South." The alarm was raised by Anbi, the association of basin consortia, in its weekly bulletin on the situation of water resources in Italy.
The report describes a particularly serious situation for Puglia, Abruzzo and Sicily, where the reservoirs are almost empty, and also serious in Sardinia , Basilicata, Calabria, Campania and Lazio.
Northern Italy is instead described as "overabundant with water", with lakes and rivers above average flow rates.
As regards the island, the latest report from the regional basin authority is for 30 June and the picture is bleak: the Sardinian reservoirs are 57.4% full (with 5 percentage points lost between May and June). In absolute terms the island had 1048.06 million cubic meters available but now - even if the next survey will only be made at the beginning of August - the situation seems to be more worrying.
Those who suffer the most from thirst are the countryside of the central-eastern part, Ogliastra - where the Region has started the process for the declaration of a state of regional disaster - and part of the Nuoro area, but there are also those who are worse off, such as the Sulcis.
The summer, in terms of residential and tourist users, should be safe, but the stop to irrigation has already arrived in the fields from north to south of the region. From Sarrabus, to the Oristano area, to Ogliastra, up to the district of Posada (where the Maccheronis basin was at 26.8%) and in the countryside of Torpè, Siniscola, San Teodoro and Budoni.
The municipality of Budoni itself has aimed at restoring some old wells to feed the water purification plant and a watermaker will be installed in the hamlet of Ottiolu which will recover sea water with a flow rate of 20 liters per second.
Meanwhile , the Region has allocated almost three million euros for a series of measures, structural and otherwise, to be implemented to mitigate the effects of the particularly serious water crisis in the Posada system, fed by the Maccheronis reservoir (which serves the territories of Torpè , Posada, Budoni and San Teodoro).
(Unioneonline)