BARI – Artesian wells run dry in Puglia like the pockets of farmers forced to face rising prices while fruit trees, vegetable gardens and stables are suffering because there is a lack of fodder including that for banded hay, the wet hay useful for horses. This is what Coldiretti Puglia reports after the wells in Toritto, in the Bari area, are also out of use, adding to those in Palo del Colle and Noci, also in the province of Bari, which the regional agency for irrigation and forestry activities should remedy ( Arif).
For the agricultural association, the lack of rain has led to a loss of water for the reservoirs amounting to 118 million cubic meters of water.
“There Puglia – highlights Coldiretti – it has the sad national record of being the region of Italy where it rains the least but when it rains the water is not collected due to the lack of reservoirs” with the further risk “of desertification of 57% of the territory”.
It is necessary “to take action once and for all by exploiting the resources of the Pnrr also to deal with the state of chronic emergency that our region endures, with enormous costs borne by all production sectors and the population itself”, claims the association agricultural sector which proposes «a plan of accumulation reservoirs with pumping to collect the water that falls and make it available for crops and to collect 50% of the rainwater which could be used for a variety of other uses, reducing the withdrawal than the drinkable one.”
