An investigation into groundwater mismanagement in Romania, Italy and Germany, which is causing droughts and other water shortage problems.
Adina Florea is a freelance journalist specialising in labour migration, minority rights, and environmental issues in Eastern Europe.
Antonia Gross is a freelance journalist working in collaborative investigations and media critique.
Elena Ledda is an independent journalist from Sardinia.
Elena Matera is a freelance climate and environmental journalist based in Berlin.
Cross-posted from Green European Journal
Marius* and Matei* carefully cross a rickety wooden bridge over the Ozana River in northeastern Romania. Behind them rise the Carpathians, their spruce forests glowing in late summer light. But the two twenty-year-olds ignore the view, focusing on the gaps between weathered planks that reveal a dry, stony riverbed below. Once a thundering river, the Ozana is now a sluggish trickle.
The boys’ destination is the groundwater pumping station near their village, Vânători-Neamț. Their question – why have their taps been dry for two months?
“I came back from Germany because my grandmother can’t carry water alone,” says Matei* to a security guard behind the barbed wire fence. The guard sighs. Only two of the sixteen pumps of the local groundwater pumping station are running. “I would give you water, but can’t you see there is none?” he says. Meanwhile, the neighbouring town still gets water from this pumping station, forcing villagers like Marius and Matei to spend thousands of euros digging private wells.
Over the past six months, a cross-border team of journalists delved into the impacts of groundwater depletion on communities in three of the EU countries hardest hit by this hidden crisis: Romania, Germany, and Italy. Through interviews with over 50 locals, hydrologists, groundwater and climate experts, alongside analysis of available data, the investigation shows how the consequences of the climate crisis compound decades of poor groundwater management, and society’s disregard for water as a finite value.
Now, outdated infrastructure and limited quantitative knowledge of groundwater reserves are having a ripple effect on local communities, even where water remains available. And national governments struggle to address this troubling reality.
Mismanagement and climate change
Groundwater supplies nearly two-thirds of the EU’s drinking water and a quarter of its agricultural irrigation. As Europe warms, severe droughts are becoming more frequent, especially in the south and southeast. According to the European Drought Observatory, northeastern Romania was under drought alert from April to September 2024, alongside parts of Italy, such as Sardinia, and the German state of Brandenburg.
Drought affects groundwater in two ways: it reduces aquifer replenishment from rainfall, and it increases reliance on underground reserves. During prolonged dry spells, both agricultural and domestic water consumption rise. For instance, data collected from Romania’s National Statistics Institute shows that in 2020 and 2022 – severe drought years – water use doubled compared to the wetter year of 2021.
This drop in groundwater levels also affects surface water, because in many regions, rivers are partially sustained by underground aquifers, especially during dry periods when there is little direct rainfall. “If the aquifer level drops, the river dries up,” warns Cristina Di Salvo, an environmental geology researcher at Italy’s National Research Institute (CNR).
Villagers of Vânători-Neamț recall the last time they had running water, for only one day, on August 15, 2024, when Romania’s Prime Minister visited a nearby monastery. Water supply was restored in mid-September after rainfall, but residents fear the shortages could return this summer if drought conditions begin early. Many regret neglecting their private wells, assuming they could rely on the central supply. In neighbouring Agapia, home to 400 nuns, water shortages have been a yearly issue since 2020. The nuns have adapted, storing rainwater in barrels. “We have hurt nature, and now nature is hurting us,” reflects Sister Maria, an elderly nun who’s running the monastery’s museum in Agapia.
Water shortages have plagued northeastern Romania since 2020, severely impacting agriculture, which dominates the local economy. Nearly 40 per cent of Romania’s farms are in this region. Authorities cite agricultural overuse and urge small-scale farmers, in particular, to stop irrigating their vegetable gardens. Farmers point to their dried-up crops, which have not seen water for several months during the summer drought of 2024. Some locals blame the authorities, others pray to God.
Hydrologist Ionuț Minea, who has been researching aquifer vulnerabilities in northeastern Romania, attributes half of the problem to local mismanagement and overconsumption, while blaming climate change for the rest. With rising rural living standards, more people have been connected to centralised water systems or have installed pumps in their wells, further straining aquifers. “The groundwater level has dropped by up to 10 metres in some areas,” he warns.
Leaky networks
In some parts of Italy, climate change is exposing the consequences of decades of inefficient water management. Here, communities endure water shortages even where groundwater remains available. Moreover, these shortages are no longer just seasonal, persisting even through the winter months.
It is a cloudy afternoon in early December 2024. Oaks, birches, and the water flowing abundantly at the foot of imposing limestone walls, make the air very humid. Observing the landscape that opens up around the Majella Massif, one of the most important water reservoirs in Abruzzo, central Italy, it is difficult to believe that around 130 thousand households in 69 municipalities relying on its springs have had interruptions in water service since June. Though not unprecedented, this is the first winter ever with almost daily interruptions.
In Abruzzo, 96.6 per cent of the water supplied comes from underground. The region has some of the richest groundwater reserves, due to its carbonate aquifers that can store large quantities of water.
“The natural resource is certainly there; the real problem is the management of resources, which depends on politics,” says Sergio Rusi, associate professor of hydrogeology at the “G. d’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara. Though the distribution of groundwater in Italy is not homogeneous, all experts interviewed agree on one thing. “More than climate change, the problem of groundwater in Italy is linked to management. There is a lack of monitoring networks that allow data to be compared over time, and therefore to make a precise estimate of the quantitative status”, says CNR’s Cristina Di Salvo.
Furthermore, most of Italy’s hydraulic infrastructure is over 30 years old. Various experts point to the high number of public and private entities that manage water infrastructures as one of the main sources of the problem. In Abruzzo’s Chieti province, according to data provided by the local water utility SASI S.p.A., water loss from leaky pipes exceeds 60 per cent, far above the national average of 42 per cent.
SASI manages the water services of 87 municipalities in the province of Chieti. The company blames current water cuts solely on nature. On a large screen at SASI’s headquarters in Lanciano, a town between the Majella Massif and the Adriatic Sea, Fabrizio Talone, the company’s head of extraction and distribution networks, shows the evolution of the area’s main spring, the Verde, in recent years. Its flow rate went down from over 2000 litres per second in June 2017 to a little less than 900 by the end of October 2024. The ideal flow rate is 1200 litres per second.
According to experts consulted for this investigation, even with the minimum flow rate of 900 litres, and considering also emergency wells are always active when flow is lower than 1200 litres per second, there is theoretically more than enough water to satisfy the needs of consumers relying on the Verde spring, which supplies 40 municipalities. These, however, have not had a regular water supply for months, with interruptions occurring mostly in the evenings and at night.
“Being without water is torture”, says Vittoria Camboni, a 49-year-old literature teacher resident of Ortona, who’s also a vice-president of the Acqua Nostra association. About twenty other residents interviewed in towns affected by water cuts blamed poor management for their problems, pointing mainly to SASI or the authorities. All indicated problems ranging from the costs they have had to assume, mainly to put a system to increase the pressure of water in their home or buy bottled water, to the impossibility of deciding independently when to wash or cook.
Where dependent people are involved, the consequences change: “What really puts me down are the negative consequences on my son’s educational path,” says Livia Poeta, a 57-year-old mother of a teen boy with Down syndrome from Ortona. “It took us months to teach him to flush the toilet. But since the water interruptions, I had to tell him to stop doing it in the evenings, when water is only for emergencies. Now, he has lost the habit completely.”
In late January 2025, Vittoria Camboni and about 40 other citizens made a formal complaint to SASI. In it, they denounced the pain caused to consumers by the water cuts. They request the adoption of every appropriate measure aimed at resolving the issue, and compensation for the damages suffered. The complainants are now waiting for the Regulatory Authority for Energy, Networks and Environment (ARERA) to conciliate before resorting to the judge.
On 12 March 2025 SASI announced in a press conference the end of the planned interruptions linked to the Verde spring; nevertheless, according to the company’s website, as of 3 April, 14 municipalities are still undergoing daily evening water cuts.
Experts say reducing water losses from the network is a priority. For this, managers of water networks need to understand where the leaks are. SASI has recently been granted more than 14 million euros to install equipment for monitoring pressure and locate the leaks. According to the experts consulted, once this is done, the next step would be to reduce losses. Overall, SASI has been granted by the Ministry of Infrastructure’s PNRR programme over 52 million euros (37.5 million directly, and the rest through the regional water service authority ERSI) for the improvement of the Verde spring water supply system. When contacted for this story, the ministry stated that these interventions should be completed by the end of March 2026.
As promoter of the Ortona Sasi class action, a public Facebook group that currently has around 1,600 members, where complaints about the lack of water are collected from citizens, Vittoria Camboni is the most visible face of the residents’ protests against water cuts. Sitting at the round wooden table in the kitchen of her apartment in the Riccio district, outside Ortona, she says, tying and untying her hair as she speaks, that every day she receives messages from angry and tired people. And while she has every intention of moving forward with the legal action against SASI, she too is tired. So much so that she has decided that as soon as her son becomes independent, she will leave Abruzzo and return to live in her homeland, Sardinia.
Multiple pressures
Infrastructure maintenance and renewal is one of the major challenges in groundwater management all over the continent, says Fanny Frick-Trzebitzky, co-lead of the junior research group regulate, based at the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She stresses that groundwater management should address the whole cycle of renewal, abstraction, and discharge, factoring in climate change. Since groundwater replenishes slowly, solutions need to be taken now. “If severe climate change causes groundwater levels to drop, there will be no way to reverse the trends,” the researcher warns.
But climate change doesn’t just bring more drought; it also leads to heavier rainfall. After long dry periods, soils can become so compacted that they struggle to absorb water. Instead of soaking into the ground to refill aquifers, rainwater runs off the surface, increasing the risk of flash floods and reducing groundwater recharge.
Another relevant aspect to take into account is the agricultural use of groundwater. In the EU, aquifers provide about a quarter of the water used for irrigation, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA). With recurring droughts depleting surface water during peak growing seasons, farmers are placing increasing pressure on aquifers. This pressure does not only lower groundwater levels, but can also lead to other phenomena, such as salt intrusion, which had made groundwater extracted from aquifers unusable in Muravera, a town in south-eastern Sardinia, Italy.
Salt intrusion is a natural phenomenon, typical of coastal areas, which occurs when saline water enters the mainland. However, this natural phenomenon is often amplified by anthropic pressures. In Muravera, the salt intrusion owes to a combination of factors including climate change, the construction of dams and flood defence systems, a fish pond that allowed seawater to reach the arms of the river, as well as exploitation linked to tourism and agriculture.
The 5000 inhabitants of Muravera are completely relying on wells for their drinking water. Until last year farmers were also dependent on wells. Now a new redistribution system started bringing water from the Flumendosa river. Some farmers have already switched to this source, while others are still relying on wells.
The town was historically renowned for its citrus groves but today, “at least up to three kilometers from the coast we have strong salinisation of the aquifer, the crops are unable to grow. The citrus groves are no longer there,” explains Stefania Da Pelo, associate professor at the Department of Chemical and Geological Sciences of the University of Cagliari. Today water cannot even be used for drinking purposes or for animals.
Thirsty industries
While households face water cuts or fear they soon will, some industrial users are given priority. This is the case in the town of Baruth, in the German state of Brandenburg, one of Germany’s driest regions.
In an industrial estate near the town, a smoking chimney sticks out from behind factory buildings. Here, about an hour’s drive south of Berlin, a conflict is brewing around the question of access to water in times of scarcity. The Brandenburger Urstromquelle factory has bottled mineral water in Baruth since the 1990s. In 2023, it was sold to Red Bull and Rauch, Red Bull’s largest bottler.
In Baruth, the local water supplier Wabau extracts 100 per cent of the town’s drinking water from underground aquifers. After Wabau sold a large proportion of this water to Red Bull, some residents fear they’ll face water scarcity. Wabau is licensed by the authorities to extract around 2.5 million cubic meters a year; 92 per cent of this is reserved for Red Bull’s production, while the rest will be available for the supply of drinking water to the local population. Red Bull also plans to expand the factory, increasing its water demand. The expansion would require clearing about 17 hectares of forest, some of which is in a water protection area. Environmental associations are warning against the expansion, while its supporters say it will bring more jobs to Baruth.
Just a few kilometres from the industrial site is a recreational area with weekend homes that stand between reddish-brown pine trees. In December 2024, the association Radeland Siedlung e.V., which gathers people residing in the recreational area, published an online petition against Red Bull’s planned expansion. “Citizens’ interests are being ignored, democratic principles are being undermined and public resources appear to be flowing disproportionately into private profits,” reads the petition.
Lukas W.* is part of the association. He doesn’t think local politicians are being careful enough with Baruth’s limited groundwater resources. “The little water we have left is now being bottled into a product that is harmful to our health, in cans that are not environmentally friendly,” says Lukas, a commercial employee in his mid-thirties who is a resident of the recreational area.
Sitting in his office, Frank Zierath, the head of the local water supplier, shows a map of the aquifers, arguing that Baruth’s water supply can last for centuries. However, he can’t give an exact figure for the amount of water stored underground. The contracts that the town has signed with Red Bull have not been disclosed.
Meanwhile, Brandenburg is getting drier. The groundwater table is sinking, and forest fires are becoming more frequent, driving up water use.
“When a resident turns on the tap, the water is there,” says Michael Rippl-Bauermeister, a forester in Baruth. But he says he can see daily how nature is already suffering: the oaks are dying, and streams are drying up. He runs his hand over the rough bark of an oak tree, leafless branches hanging from its 400-year-old trunk. The forest as we know it today will no longer exist in the future, says the forester. “I’m happy if I will still have any trees here at all.”
Unequal access
Groundwater overuse has severe consequences on ecosystems. Water expert Frick-Trzebitzky warns that excessive extraction weakens forests, as trees lose moisture and become more vulnerable to diseases and pests. She emphasises that groundwater is not just a resource but an ecosystem, home to organisms that filter and maintain water quality. As its levels drop, these fragile ecosystems degrade. If conditions change too quickly, they can collapse, affecting both the quality and availability of groundwater.
With authorities slow to respond, those facing water insecurity are finding their own ways to adapt. In mid-July 2024, 167 mostly rural settlements dependent on groundwater in northeastern Romania faced water restrictions. Almost half of the region’s population isn’t connected to a centralised water supply system, solely relying on private wells. Over 4300 such wells dried up by 31 July 2024.
Once-green hills are now pale yellow, and villagers haul water in horse-drawn carts or tractors. In Coștiugeni, Botoșani county, Paul*, a seasonal worker in the Netherlands for part of the year, spends his summers scouring abandoned wells, offering free water collection – charging only for fuel. “Sheep farmers are desperate”, he says.
In some communities, firefighters delivered water, but sporadically. And without a centralised rainwater collection system, residents improvised, placing bottles and barrels under their houses’ gutters to capture every drop.
Amber Wutich, an anthropologist at Arizona State University, recognises what is happening in these villages as “autogestión”, or self-supply. She studied water-insecure communities for almost two decades and noticed that when the state fails, people construct their own water and social systems. “Unfortunately, autogestión is a double-edged sword,” she warns. “It helps the state justify further disinvestment. To escape abandonment, communities need activism and political engagement to address the root causes rather than just mitigating the symptoms.”
This crisis can’t be solved by locals alone. While the EU Water Framework Directive provides an important legal foundation and has led to significant progress in water governance, monitoring data suggests that its targets will not be met by the 2027 deadline. Frick-Trzebitzky says that groundwater conditions vary significantly between regions, meaning that effective management cannot follow a one-size-fits-all approach. What’s needed is both local action and regional coordination.
“Ensuring that rainwater does not simply run off but infiltrates the soil is becoming increasingly important”, says Frick-Trzebitzky. Instead, some regions on the continent are overreliant on long-distance water transfers, which may help in the short term but often shift water shortages elsewhere.
However, technical solutions alone are not enough. Frick-Trzebitzky sees water councils as a way to create more adaptive decision-making structures, bringing together local stakeholders to balance competing demands.
Back in Vânători-Neamț, the security guard sighs again. He gestures toward the groundwater pumping station, its machinery humming. “We turn on all pumps at 6 AM, but they shut down after fifteen minutes. There’s simply not enough water.”
But the lack of water is not felt by everyone equally.
In Târgu Neamț, just a ten-minute drive away, the crisis is invisible. At 6 PM, the streets glow golden in the setting sun. A digital screen reads 32 degrees Celsius. Beneath it, a manicured municipal garden blooms with red flowers, dark green thuja, and lush grass. Two elderly women sit chatting on a shaded bench. “We had water all summer,” one of them remarks. She knows the villages are struggling but shrugs. “If the water runs and nobody imposes limits, people use as much as they can afford.”
Anthropologist Amber Wutich reminds access to water is mediated by a social system. “If we want more equitable water systems, we must confront the broader issues of political and social exclusion rather than focusing solely on infrastructure.”
The image of thirsty villages and neighbouring towns where water flows unchecked repeats across northeastern Romania. This stark contrast is not unique to this forgotten corner of the continent – it reflects a deeper crisis of inequality in water access that might soon unfold across Europe.
*Some of the interviewees’ surnames were omitted due to their concerns about potential repercussions for speaking out against the mismanagement of local groundwater resources.
This investigation was supported by Journalismfund Europe.
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