Rome Letter:It was a very warm Sunday afternoon in this unseasonably warm Roman springtime. So much so that Roberta X opted to paddle around in the celebrated 18th century Fontana Di Trevi in central Rome to keep cool. Soon this was not enough. Moved by the heat, Roberta decided she wanted to have a proper swim.
Without further ado, she took off her clothes and swam around in the fountain's waters naked - to the delight of the large crowd of tourists who always gather round the Trevi on a hot day. Digital cameras and cell phones were soon recording Roberta's audacious swim and by evening, inevitably it seems, she had ended up on various internet sites and TV news bulletins.
While a majority of the onlookers applauded and whistled approvingly at 40-year-old Roberta, not everyone was amused. Police soon received calls of complaint, and within 20 minutes they had arrived at the scene to order Roberta (who in the meantime was sunbathing naked on one of the Tritons that flank Neptune in the fountain's impressive sculpture) to come down off the monument and get dressed.
As she climbed out of the fountain, Roberta announced to the forces of law and order: "I was hot. Anyway, the water belongs to everybody, doesn't it?"
Apart from causing a diversion of questionable taste, Roberta had unwittingly asked one of the key questions of what seems set to be a long, hot and very dry summer.
Already agriculture and industry are arguing about how best Italy's limited water resources should be used, with many experts suggesting the government should call a state of emergency. The emergency has been staring us in the face throughout this mild and dry winter. As we walk up and down the lakeside, our own Lago di Bracciano is already looking unseasonably low.
Up north in the Po valley and around the great lakes, things look considerably worse. Ironically, areas like Calabria and Sicily in the south picked up more rain this winter than the northern regions.
Last week, the water station at Pontelagoscuro on the Po was pumping 431 cubic metres of water per second, or less than half its normal average for April of 953 cubic metres. The Lago di Garda was registering 55.9 centimetres of a depth reading, as compared to the April average of 110 centimetres.
More than a month ago, the Italian parliament's environment and agriculture commission sounded the alarm about possible water shortages this year. The main problem clearly has been the lack of rain and snow: "In the whole Alpine area this February, the amount of snow-covered terrain was only a third of that registered in February 2006," the commission said.
Calculations suggest that, nationwide, Italy experienced one of the driest winters ever recorded, with the rainfall level down 30 per cent between September 2006 and February 2007. The frontline in the water shortage crisis is likely to be the Po valley, where a variety of industries compete with agriculture for water resources.
Last week, the president of Fiat and of Confindustria, the confederation of Italian industry, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, warned that water shortages could force factories to close this summer. The problem is that power stations on the Po (and elsewhere) need all the water they can get to meet a consumer demand that, thanks to air-conditioning units, tends to peak at the hottest (and driest) periods of the summer.
At the same time, agriculture is screaming for water. In and around the Po, for example, 22 million quintali (a quintale is 100 kilos) of tomatoes and approximately half a million acres of rice are grown, and they all need lots of water.
Not surprisingly, the value of water is on the rise. Trading on the Milan stock exchange in a number of water-linked companies was suspended last Friday because share prices had risen too much.
In what is clearly a complex situation, there appear to be two roads forward for the government - either it rains heavily soon, or an emergency plan will have to be introduced.
In the meantime, as Italy comes to terms with its seeming vulnerability to global climate change, the Vatican too entered the environmental debate last week with a conference entitled, Climate Change and Development, intended, in the words of Cardinal Renato Martino, "to educate".
God gave humankind the mandate to subdue and have dominion over the earth, but he also expected humanity "to cultivate and care for it", said Cardinal Martino, who freely admitted that the Vatican tends to be cautious about making pronouncements on global warning.
Pope Benedict sent a message to the conference in which he expressed the hope that it would help foster "the research and promotion of lifestyles and models of production and consumption that respect creation and the real demands of sustainable progress of peoples".
Closer to home, up in the Po valley this summer, that could be a tall order.