“Extreme temperatures, prolonged absence of precipitation, and high consumption: a condition that requires an extraordinary commitment and a new awareness in the use of the resource”
August 18, 2026 – Como Acqua is intervening regarding the critical issues affecting certain areas of the province, reiterating that the current situation must be viewed within the context of an exceptional water emergency, caused by the combination of high temperatures, a prolonged absence of rainfall, and consumption levels significantly higher than normal. This condition affects vast areas of Italy as well as various European regions, making a shared and conscious management of the resource increasingly necessary.
Como Acqua is daily committed to guaranteeing the service and, in parallel, to carrying out efficiency, research and leak reduction, maintenance and modernization interventions on the network. The Operator operates on over 5 thousand kilometers of water supply network, characterized in various areas by the presence of dated infrastructure, which is progressively undergoing rehabilitation work.
During this phase of critical shortage, in the territories most at risk of scarcity, extraordinary actions have been implemented to increase the availability of the resource and support the water supply system, supplementing ordinary management and maintenance activities with specific interventions on sourcing. Since as early as August 5, Como Acqua has activated a water tanker supply service for the Intelvi basins at the Argegno lifting station, water from private supply sources has been added to the network, and furthermore, thanks to the upgrading work on the first section of the inter-municipal aqueduct—completed in recent months—it has been possible to increase the water flow rate from the Argegno wells toward the town of Pigra.
Particular attention has been paid in recent days to the municipal territory of Alta Valle Intelvi, where the combination of reduced availability, high consumption, and issues with the network and plants is causing a particularly complex situation. Activities to search for hidden leaks and further checks on the system are underway, including the involvement of specialized suppliers, with the aim of identifying the most critical sectors and focusing interventions on them.
In a system already at its limit, consumption can cause very rapid fluctuations in tank levels—just think of how many liters of water are required to fill a swimming pool or to run the daily industrial washing machines in accommodation facilities. This in turn makes both the duration of the outages and the time required to fully restore service variable. When an unexpected critical issue occurs, it is not always possible to intervene with sufficient advance notice, nor to guarantee absolute certainty regarding the outage schedules and the situation of every single street or user.
On the communication front, Como Acqua recently introduced the SMS Avvisami service dedicated to information on service suspensions and interventions, serving as an additional tool beyond regulatory obligations. In an emergency and constantly evolving situation, this tool makes it possible to provide updates, but cannot guarantee a definitive forecast of how the critical issue will progress, also in relation to elevation, network conformation, and the conditions present within the pipes.
“The emergency we are experiencing cannot be addressed by a single entity – Como Acqua concludes –. The Operator is deploying all available resources and tools, through ordinary and extraordinary activities and interventions aimed at safeguarding the resource and guaranteeing the service. But in a profoundly changed climate situation, the collaboration of everyone is essential: of the administrations, called upon to promote virtuous behaviors, and of the citizens, whom we ask to reduce non-essential consumption and use water with the utmost awareness. The water resource can no longer be considered inexhaustible, and this awareness must necessarily accompany us into the future as well.