Because despite the rains the drought problem still remains:what doesn't work and possible solutions

Despite being the fifth country in Europe for rainfall received, Italy does worse than everyone and retains just 4% of it

The floods in Emilia Romagna, the Po alla first alert threshold of filling Lake Como without opening the Olginate dam would have overflowed.Similar speech for the pelvis Ridracoli dam in Tuscany.Looking at this picture it would seem that next summer in Italy there will be water to sell.Enough to make us forget the drought of the last two years.Yet this is not the case, because of all the rain that has fallen in recent days, enough for six months in some areas, our country will do nothing, or almost nothing.In Italy, in fact, only 11% of rainwater is collected.For comparison, in Spain they are at 15%.Everything else escapes from the pipes, ends up in the sea, in the sewers, in the ground, he explains the Messenger making use of Massimo Gargano, general director of Anbi, the association of consortia for the management and protection of the territory and irrigation water.The result is that just 4% of the total remains.

«Milan is the rainiest city in Europe»

Italy receives a lot of rain.Around 300 billion cubic meters per year.In 2019, a particularly rainy year, 328 fell.In dry 2022 just 220.«Milan is the rainiest city in Europe with 1200 millimeters of rainfall on average and Italy is fifth among the 27 countries of the European Union for rainfall after Croatia, Ireland, Austria and Slovenia» he explains to the Republic Erasmo D'Angelis, former general secretary of the Central Italy Basin Authority and former undersecretary of the Letta government with responsibility also for dams and water infrastructures.«Despite being one of the European countries where it rains the most, we are the one that stores the least amount of water», adds D'Angelis.

Water loss and mismanagement

And we don't make good use of that collection.The dispersion of the 600 thousand kilometers of water network reaches 40%.The purified wastewater is not used in any way - neither to wash the streets, nor for crops - but simply thrown into the sea.Half goes to agriculture, which however wastes 70% of what it uses with obsolete irrigation techniques.While the industry cools the machinery with very pure groundwater which should be reserved for drinking use.In short, a lot of water has fallen, but in a few days it will all have been lost.And if it doesn't rain in the summer, without snow in the mountains, the situation won't be too different from last year.There have been nine droughts in the last 20 years.While before there were one in every 15.Yet little or nothing has changed.

The solutions

There are solutions in the medium and long term, however.«With Coldiretti we launched the Laghetti plan to create small reservoirs, without cement, which collect water from streams.They are positioned at different altitudes and the jump from one basin to another allows the production of hydroelectric energy.They are a precious supply for farmers in periods of drought", explains Gargano, who also mentions extraordinary maintenance of the water network among the interventions to be implemented as soon as possible.D'Angelis then suggests rehabilitating 321 large dams that our country does not currently use.

In addition to this, it would be fundamental - he claims - to streamline the apparatus of bodies that manage water:too many and too disconnected.Wanting to take a step even further, we could follow the example of Rotterdam (in the Dutch city, despite what one might think, it rains much less than in Milan), where squares like Benthemplein have become squares of water.Lowered compared to street level, they are normally used as meeting spaces, with playgrounds, benches, and children's activities.But in exceptional cases they can be filled with water, to prevent this from being lost or flooding the surrounding areas.