Tuscany and Umbria join forces around the Montedoglio reservoir

Tuscany and Umbria join forces to ensure that their respective farmlands never run out of water. The two regions have signed an agreement for the shared management and use of the water resources of the Montedoglio artificial lake, the largest in Tuscany, built for a capacity of 168 million cubic metres, but reduced to 135 million in 2010. The agreement aims to create a system of canalisations that will connect the Montedoglio-Lake Trasimeno-Valdichiana triangle, favouring the use of water for agricultural use in the entire territory and alleviating the basin's water difficulties at critical times. We are talking about water volumes of almost 80 million cubic metres per year.

'The agreement,' explains Massimo Gargano, managing director of Anbi, 'represents the implementation of an ambitious project, conceived between the 1960s and 1970s. At a time of climate change, without water supply security there is no agriculture even in these territories, where there is actually no shortage of water'. At Montedoglio there is the most important reservoir in central Italy: 'Here,' explains Serena Stefani, president of the Consorzio di bonifica 2 Alto Valdarno, 'there are dynamic, structured, innovative farms that generate an economy, but they need to be able to count on water resources to produce. However, the so-called last mile was missing: the irrigation districts, i.e. the pipelines needed to transport water from the hillside basins to the fields'.

Seventy-six million euro are the resources needed to build irrigation infrastructures in Foiano della Chiana and Montepulciano: the agreement signed between Tuscany and Umbria on the division of water uses opens the way to financing these projects. "The agreement is a first, important step in this direction," said Anbi president Francesco Vincenzi, "but to ensure the development of irrigation in Tuscany and guarantee the necessary attention to the needs of agriculture, it will be important to ensure the presence of representatives of the agricultural world at the technical-institutional table to monitor results and needs.