Water crisis, drought, the emergency in Basilicata is unprecedented. Discomfort in homes where taps have been dry for days and fields are parched: the sun threatens crops and makes livestock thirsty.
Protest
Yesterday, from the early hours of the morning, Coldiretti with members and provincial and regional managers, organized a real protest demonstration. The goal is to monitor the work of the technical secretariat of the water program agreement between Puglia and Basilicata. Under consideration is the distribution of water volumes.
“The situation, as we have repeatedly denounced, is dramatic and risks compromising the future of many companies – underlines Antonio Pessolani, president of Coldiretti Basilicata – especially if the meeting of the technical secretariat does not satisfy the farmers’ requests”. For Pessolani “we must intervene urgently but unfortunately we are seeing a thicket of bodies and bureaucrats that do not allow the Land Reclamation Consortium to transfer the water resource”. Coldiretti asks to “start the procedures for the recognition of the state of calamity”.
The breeders
Not only houses with dry taps, not only burned fields, but also the risk for livestock that risks dying or becoming infected due to the lack of water. “At this time, immediate interventions are needed to provide support and guarantee the supply of water to livestock farms”, is the appeal made by the president of the Regional Breeders Association (ARA), Palmino Ferramosca, to the Basilicata Region and the mayors, in light of the difficult situation that the sector is experiencing due to the drought, with consequent increase in the price of fodder and feed. The issue is becoming “difficult to manage – he explained – especially among transhumant farms that had to anticipate, in the Matera area, the return from the plain because the pastures were really scarce and poor”. For the president of the ARA “today, however, the main problem, in addition to the scarcity of fodder, is the lack of water”.
