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Drought, a state of emergency for five regions

To deal with the drought emergency, the Council of Ministers approved a state of emergency for five Italian regions: Emilia Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardy, Veneto and Piedmont. The decree provides for the allocation of 36,500,000 eurosto be divided, according to ministerial sources, as follows: 10.9 million for Emilia Romagna, 4.2 million for Friuli Venezia Giulia, 9 million for Lombardy, 7.6 million for Piedmont and 4.8 million for Veneto .

Mariastella Gelmini, Minister for Regional Affairs and Autonomies, explained that “the government will not stop here, there will be other measures and we are focused on grounding the resources of the NRP dedicated to this issue ».

The next step will be the appointment of the Special Commissionerwho will have the task of coordinating the structural interventions provided for by the decree. They are indicated in the draft of the decree “20 priorities” to be implemented “by and no later than” 2024 to mitigate damage. The extraordinary Commissioner will make use of a structure composed of 30 units and will be able to count on the instrument of the ordinance in derogation to speed up the implementation of the modernization interventions to reduce water losses. It will also be his task to verify the adoption, by the Regions, of measures to rationalize consumption and eliminate water waste, as well as to report the non-compliance of the managers.

The theme of colander aqueductsand therefore of infrastructural deficiencies, is on the agenda: the government has allocated 1.38 billion euros for the reduction of losses in the distribution networks, especially in the South.

Veneto had been the first – April 21 – to ask for a state of emergency for drought“Because the indicators were already evident two months ago,” Governor Luca Zaia told theHandle. “So the government’s choice to grant us a state of emergency is welcome. Now we are waiting to understand the details and we are waiting for the appointment of the commissioner and any sub commissioners so that we can be operational with quick interventions. Then there is an aspect, the financial one, which we believe is fundamental to give relief to those who have suffered damage ».

Zaia hopes that “European funds will be taken advantage of, for example, for the cleaning of mountain reservoirs, for the creation of new reservoirs perhaps from disused quarries, to help agriculture to use non-sieving forms of irrigation since the canalization open sky has a fearful dispersion of the water resource. We have to focus on arid-culture modalitiesIsraeli type, where there is the tube with the drop for many crops, rather than rain irrigation, where the sprinkler system is much less wasteful in terms of water resources than canalization ».

Source: Vanity Fair

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