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Italy’s largest river drying up, threatens a third of the country’s agricultural output

italys largest river drying up 9
Last year, the United Nations had warned of worldwide disaster with half of the planet’s 500 biggest rivers seriously depleting or being polluted. After extracting disappointment from the Nile to China’s Yellow River, it is now the turn of Italy’s largest river – the Po, to reveal the worst effects of drought’s unusually warm and dry weather.

Dried up in recent months, the Po River, running from west to east across northern Italy, is the lifeline for the broad Po valley, accounting for about a third of the country’s agricultural output!

The Po’s level fell by 80 centimetres in late April, to 6.53 metres below its normal level in the northern town of Pontelagoscuro! This intensified the fears drought.

With the Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, declaring a state of emergency as a precautionary measure, on a contrary, the Cabinet Undersecretary Enrico Letta ‘reassured’ the latest news of the Po and the water situation in general.

Though, the environment ministry was unable to give immediate details of what measures the government envisaged, filling the Po with water flowing from large lakes and reservoirs in the Alps has been planned.

True, this may not bring the river back to its normal levels; the torrential rain falling throughout the centre and north of Italy has made the weather generally cooler and wetter, otherwise relieving the habitants of the fears of drought.

Photo: thewe.cc

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