Because despite the floods, a dry summer awaits us

The enormous amount of water that has caused deaths and damage in Emilia Romagna will not even serve to mitigate the drought that has characterized Italy in the last two years. The why explains it Erasmus D'Angelis, former general secretary of the Basin Authority of Central Italy and former undersecretary of the Letta government with responsibility also for dams and water infrastructure. D'Angelis, who is now president of the Earth Water Agenda Foundation and wrote the book Italian waters (Giunti), a summa on the country's water resources, summarizes as follows: "In Italy it rains a lot, it rains badly, it rains in concentrated areas, but the water is there. However, we are unable to store it, so the Italian drought is a unique case in the world: we are a country in which it rains a lot, but which wastes most of its water".

Given the lack of rainfall in the last two years, it is hard to believe in an Italy rich in water.
"There are data - replies the expert - our peninsula benefits from a cumulative rainfall of 301 billion cubic meters of rain per year on average. In recent years we have had a very rainy 2019 with 328 billion cubic meters, while last year we only had 220 billion.Milan is the rainiest city in Europe with an average of 1200 millimeters of rain and Italy is fifth among the 27 countries of the European Union for rainfall after Croatia, Ireland, Austria and Slovenia".

So how do we get from Milan, the rainiest city in Europe, to the dry Po?
"The current drought certainly depends on the scarcity of rain in a given period, since the current one is the longest drought since monitoring began at the end of the 1800s and it is the first time that it lasts for almost two years, but our problem is that despite being one of the European countries where it rains the most, we are the one that stores the least water overall".

Are you saying that if we managed our waters better we could have weathered this drought?
“Yes, and we have all the signs to take action in the face of a changing climate. In the last 20 years we have monitored nine severe droughts, whereas previously droughts occurred approximately every 15 years”.

In the face of these signals what have we done?
"Nothing. We have continued and continue to waste water, remaining the poorest country in terms of infrastructure and with a high waste of water resources. In other words, we store less water than all other European countries, only around 4% of rainfall. To make a comparison, Spain accumulates 15% of it".

What would be a good stack?
"For us, a good result would be to at least double that."

How could this be done?
"In the meantime, it would be essential for us to be able to restore about 120 dams. In Italy we have 321 large dams that have an accumulation capacity of around 13 and a half billion cubic meters, but in reality we accumulate about 8 billion and 4 billion we lose because the dams are being checked, tested or construction is delayed. I repeat, there is a huge problem for the primary infrastructure, which does not allow us to store water".

What about the distribution network?
"We were the great builders of aqueducts and now we have a gigantic transport infrastructure problem. The numbers speak for themselves: for all uses we withdraw 34 billion cubic meters out of the 301 billion cubic meters of rainfall, a quantity that may be enough for two Italys But 26 billion of those 34 billion cubic meters arrive at their destination, because we literally lose a sea of ​​water along the way in 550,000 kilometers of obsolete aqueduct networks, with which we waste about 40% of resources. Agriculture uses 50 -52% of our resources, but still, between 50 and 70% is wasted with irrigation techniques that are completely unsuitable for a modern country".

And what remains where does it end?
"It remains 21-22% used by industries, another area of ​​losses and waste after agriculture, where very high quality water such as groundwater is used to cool machinery or wash vehicles. From 26 June 2023 the new rules will take effect European Unions for the reuse of waste water with respect to which we are totally in default and Europe will sanction us.After all, we already pay Europe 165,000 euros every day for sanctions which concern, for example, the failure to purify the water of around 2,000 municipalities, something as a developing country. And the paradox is that when we purify the waters, spending a lot of money, then we don't use them for watering, for industry, to clean the streets. We simply throw them into the sea".

Will the Pnrr change anything to get the infrastructure back on track? Is there funding planned?
"Ridiculous: between 1 and 2% of the funds were given to water. The current infrastructures derive from the last major post-war works, with the Marshall Plan and the Cassa del Mezzogiorno, everything stopped in the 1970s. In Italian public expenditure, water is worth between 1 and 2%.Nothing has been done anymore, water has left the state budget, as well as the regions, because after the Galli law of 1994, the management of 600,000 km of water mains for drinking water in our homes has been entrusted to a tariff and even in the Municipalities the item water has disappeared.If we add to this a management of the water sector fragmented into too many different bodies and subjects, which do not coordinate with each other, the causes of the disaster are evident".

Are they in practice the same causes of hydrogeological instability?
"Exactly. Never before have we faced such an obvious problem for a country like ours: in the last 15 days we have had two flood events in the same area, two extreme events following an extreme drought. When the water it usually falls in half a year it is clear that if adequate structures do not exist disaster strikes, because drought soils reject water and when they are saturated as they are now they stop absorbing it.These are tragedies that we have been seeing for years and for which there would be action prevention. But we still don't implement them".