Le risorse idriche lombarde

Water is the element that makes life on Earth possible, in all its complexity; it is essential for basic human needs like health, food production, energy provision and the maintenance of the regional and global ecosystems. As the planet’s population expands and living conditions improve, the demand for water is growing rapidly and its supply becoming more and more problematic. In short, we humans are now being called on to use our available water more wisely In Lombardy Region water has always offered extraordinary opportunities: its use in irrigation has been and continues to be the main engine of the plain’s agricultural 2 development and, together with the improvement of broad stretches of the region for farming use, has given us the landscape we have today; its use for energy production enabled the region’s industry to grow fast and still makes a considerable contribution in terms of renewable energy; and the widespread availability of water has been an essential resource for the establishment of various industries and indeed continues to foster manufacturing in Lombardy; water’s recreational aspects also are an important feature of the territory, with its lakes that attract tourists and its other highly prized natural environments. Demands on water resources for these various uses (total allocations of 130bn m3/year) greatly exceed current supply (precipitation of 27bn m3/year), so a situation of serious water shortage is being created. Various critical situations in terms of water availability have already occurred in recent years: one in the summer of 2003 which particularly affected farm production, and another in the spring of 2007, when a state of emergency had to be declared on account of difficulties with power generation (with a risk of blackouts) due to shortages of cooling water for the thermal power stations in the plain. Groundwater is without any doubt an important resource for dealing with these deficiencies, especially in the plains. groundwater provides a great deal of water nominally available for the ever-growing demands of human activities. Accurate understanding of underground structure and hydrogeology and of the quantities of water that soak in and are taken out, together with an accurate estimate of underground water flows with the use of three-dimensional models, are accordingly needed if we are to manage this resource properly – and above all for the future – because they enable us to simulate the effect of critical situations on the groundwater.