Kevin Reynolds
Waterworld

Today I was in the lowlands of Cremona, on the Po. I had a curious visit to the aquarium of species that should inhabit it but instead stay in tanks because if they're put back in the river, they risk dying the next day.
Let's not talk about how we are ruining a river like this with pollution and senseless embankments; the thing that left me incredibly astonished is something else, and a fisherman told me about it concerning the river's level, which, since it rains less and there is drought, they say, is always lower, lower, lower, lower... except it suddenly fills up after three days of rain and floods everything around it. Does anyone remember 1994 in Piedmont, including the dead? In 2000 in the Cremona area, it rose 6 meters in two days, starting from minus 6 hydrometric level, so 12 meters total, flooding houses up to the second floor.
What bad luck, I say, and he, a guy like Roberto the pot seller, responds: bad luck, not for a damn!
Why?
Because ? he explains ? floods, like droughts, are caused by someone upstream from us.
Who?
Those who manage the levels of the alpine dams and going down, those who manage the level of the lakes.
What do you mean?
That is, if you need water to generate electricity, you close the dam and downstream you just let it drip, less water reaches the lakes and the tributaries, and those who manage the level of the lakes always want to be at the edge with the embankments; otherwise, how do they navigate the boats? And then how ugly Como looks with the lake down by three meters.
And so?
And so the time it rains for three days, they hold out until the limit, as soon as the water reaches the warning level, they open the faucet and budubum... everything comes downstream, all together, that of Lake Maggiore, Lake Como, and Lake Garda, the dams and the tributaries, we have 23 of these faucets, all sealed until they can no longer. The problem is that when they can't take it anymore and release downstream, we die. In one day we get three accumulated days of rain. In 1994 in Piedmont, it was Enel that managed a dam just above the Tanaro: it rains for five days, they know they have to lower the dam's level, but they also know that if they do, they lose kilowatt-hours, so they hold out until the water reaches almost the edge, then they open, and those downstream received so much water that 70 of them died. Trial against Enel, zero convictions.
So is drought also a lie?
The biggest lie of all, especially because if you put embankments on the river, the river no longer discharges its power to the sides but on the bed, that is, it digs, and the water level measured as it was 50 years ago is no longer accurate. Even the pumps no longer draw because the entire river has lowered, not just the water level. And if the river lowers and becomes torrential, as it already is in several points, it also alters the remaining fauna: reinserting sturgeons is pointless; how the hell do they lay eggs in a river that flows three times as fast?

Well, but with the extremes, flooding, and drought, there is always a profit, and besides Enel and the sleazy council members, the crybabies of the agricultural unions know it all too well, screaming day and day for the devastation from too dry and too wet, getting loads of our public compensation money, only giving crumbs to the farmers.
What doesn’t make money is a state of normality, with the right water for everyone, which there is plenty of.
That's why no one wants it. But go to hell, huh?.