Po River, Italy's Largest, At Levels Typical For June - Hydropower Worries Grow - Reuters

[hatrack]

EDIT

Around 15 percent of Italy's electricity is produced from hydro generation. Water supplies are also essential for colling down thermoelectric plants.

Drought fears intensified after the Po fell on Sunday to 6.53 metres (21 ft 5.0 in) below its normal level in the northern town of Pontelagoscuro, having dropped by 80 centimetres in a week. The Po region accounts for about one third of Italy's agricultural production. At one site, the nearby Lake Garda was 50 centimetres below its average of the past 50 years, although the levels of other lakes were not worrying for now, Italy's biggest farmers association Coldiretti said.

Italy's hottest winter in 200 years meant snowfall was light in the Alps, with little snow-melt to swell the Po. Then a hot, dry spring set in, with temperatures over the past few days approaching levels usually seen in June.

Farmers are looking ahead to the beginning of the farm irrigation season next month with concern. "We are very worried for this summer because there has been very little rain during the winter and there is insufficient water in the mountains," Fabrizio Ferro, a farmer in the city of Rovigo, on the Po delta, told Reuters.

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http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/41535/story.htm

[donsu]

1. closer and closer comes disaster

nt

[NNadir]

2. Here is some things interesting about Italy.

It had the first geothermal plant electrical in the world, dating IIRC, to 1913. Almost a century later, Italy's geothermal capacity, even with all of its volcanoes, is not particularly vast.

Italy is the only country in Europe to announce a "nuclear phase out" and actually act on it. The Italian electrical company, ENEL, mostly invests in nuclear plants in France, Slovakia and Slovenia. Otherwise they just burn more and more fossil fuels.