Switzerland Doubles Water Releases to Prop Up Italy's Lake Maggiore as Po Basin Drought Deepens

Switzerland is opening the taps to save part of Italy's water supply. Canton Ticino agreed to boost water releases from Lake Lugano toward Ponte Tresa from 3 cubic meters per second to 8, with the extra flow feeding into Lake Maggiore, according to Euronews. The move could take effect as early as August 11.

The decision came out of an emergency session of the Italian-Swiss Bilateral Consultation Body, convened by Italy's Ministry of the Environment after data from the Po River Basin Authority showed the lake's situation deteriorating. Italian delegates from the ministry and the Lombardy and Piedmont regional governments accepted the Swiss proposal. Canton Ticino says the arrangement is temporary and will be reassessed within days.

Lake Maggiore is now classified as being in extreme drought, according to Reuters reporting from Breme, Italy. The Po itself hit a record low for early August at Cremona, where the river fell to 8.59 meters below hydrometric zero on July 30, one centimeter below the record set during the 2022 drought, Bloomberg reported via The Japan Times. Flow at that point was running below a third of the historical norm.

Alessandro Delpiano, secretary-general of the Po River Basin Authority, put it bluntly earlier this month: "The emergency continues, and there is no end in sight," he told ANSA, as relayed by Anadolu Agency. Meteorologist Lorenzo Tedici of iLMeteo.it said Italy's heat wave was expected to persist roughly another ten days from the August 6 report, with temperatures near 39-40C easing only briefly before an African high-pressure system returns.

Rice growers are already taking the loss

Italy is Europe's largest rice producer, with about 235,000 hectares planted in 2025, more than 80% of it concentrated in Pavia, Vercelli and Novara, according to Reuters. Farmer Giuseppe Tagliabue, who runs the Cascina Rinalda estate in Lombardy, made a call this season that would have been unthinkable a decade ago: he diverted all his available water to part of his land and let the rest go dry rather than risk losing the whole crop.

"Because of this terrible water shortage, we had to make some rather drastic choices," Tagliabue told Reuters. He says he is not confident he'll recoup what he spent planting the fields he abandoned.

The Est Sesia irrigation consortium, which supplies much of the rice belt between Lombardy and Piedmont, has resorted to a rotation system, alternating which sections get water week to week. "This year, we had to introduce a rotation system," said Franco Bullano, the consortium's water management director, who called the current season harder to manage than the severe 2022 drought. Bullano noted that irrigation has stayed possible largely because Alpine ice reserves keep melting as temperatures climb, an emergency buffer, not a sustainable plan. "We only retain 10 to 11% of rainfall," he said, adding that reservoirs are being discussed but could take decades to build.

The local Confagricoltura farmers' association estimates the Pavia rice sector alone could lose more than €100 million, driven by the drought, rising production costs, and falling paddy prices from non-EU competition.

The broader European crisis

Satellite imagery from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 program, captured between August 1 and 3, shows exposed sandbanks and gravel bars along the Loire near Saumur, the Po near Cremona, the Rhine near Boppard, and the Danube near Paks, according to the European Space Agency's Earth observation program. On the Danube, low discharge is straining reactor cooling operations at the Paks Nuclear Power Plant. On the Rhine, reduced levels are limiting cargo transport and disrupting industrial supply chains across central Europe.

Data released this week by the European Drought Observatory and cited by Türkiye Today, based on an AFP analysis of Copernicus figures, found record-low July flow rates on 95% of monitored stretches of the Thames, 85% of the Rhine, and roughly two-thirds of the Danube, the weakest since measurements began in 1992. The Po saw record lows along about 40% of its course, and the Rhone along roughly 30%.

More than 85% of France was under drought warning or alert as of mid-July 2026, according to the European Drought Observatory, compared with about 65% at the same point in 2025 and under 2% in 2024. Copernicus also reported that July 2026 was the second-warmest July on record in western Europe.

None of the sources dispute that this is a severe, unusual drought. Where there's real uncertainty is how much relief the Swiss water release will actually deliver, and for how long. Canton Ticino's own framing treats this as a stopgap, not a fix, and Italian officials have not claimed otherwise. The question of whether scarce water goes to drinking supplies, rice paddies, or river ecosystems is not resolved by moving water from one Alpine lake to another. It just buys time.

The open question now is whether the thunderstorms meteorologists expected in the following days after August 6 actually materialized with enough volume to matter, or whether Italy is heading into peak irrigation season with reserves that keep shrinking regardless of what Switzerland sends downstream.