Seawater is seeping into Italy’s longest river as the waterway starts to run dry in the heatwave, hitting a farming heartland that produces the milk for Parmesan cheese.
The Po River has never fallen this low so early in the year, raising fears of a devastating drought next month.
On the bank of one of its branches, farmer Federica Vidali looked anxiously at her sunflower field. One of the two canals that irrigate it has been shut, because the seawater would enter and damage the crops.
Photo: AFP
“We’re left with the water that others are willing to leave us. But we’re not second-division farmers!” Vidali said.
The Po River’s flow has collapsed in a matter of days, dropping below 300m3 per second, compared with an average of about 1,500 in June, interregional river agency Aipo said.
“It has never dropped so fast, so early,” Stefano Calderoni of the Italian irrigation association said.
Sandbanks are multiplying, depths fall to barely one meter in places, and the river’s few remaining fishers swelter in the heat.
The many Alpine lakes that feed the Po Valley, Italy’s agroindustrial heartland, are still about 60 percent full, but farmers are drawing heavily from the waterways to irrigate fields parched by the heat.
It rained this winter, but the mountain snow that used to replenish the lake has already melted due to climate change.
“We’re not in a drought situation yet, but at this rate, there’s less than three weeks of water left in reserve,” environmental group Legambiente expert Damiano Di Simine said.
Drought struck the Po Valley in 2022, but only at the end of July.
Further downstream, at the river’s mouth, the situation is already serious: Seawater has pushed about 20km upstream.
Saltwater is beginning to contaminate farmland reclaimed over the past five centuries from the delta marshes.
Barriers have been placed in the river to stop seawater, but they only work if the river’s flow is strong enough.
“We’d need almost double the current flow for them to work,” said Rodolfo Laurenti, the engineer in charge of irrigation in the delta.
Laurenti called for cooperation between regions to manage water in the event of a crisis.
Farmers are also considering new dams or water retention basins, but “we’re afraid that all these structures will still never be enough,” Laurenti said.
A few kilometers closer to the sea, clam fishermen are also struggling with soaring June temperatures. The heat has warmed the lagoons, boosting the growth of algae that cover the shellfish.
They must also clear algae from the nets protecting clams from invasive blue crabs, which arrived from North America in recent years.
“On top of all the problems we already have, we now have this crazy, long, and unexpected heat,” Polesine Fishermen’s Cooperatives Consortium president Paolo Mancin said.
“Macroalgae are forming, there’s a high mortality rate among clams... If it were something that lasted a week, we could get through it,” he said.
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