TRENTO, Italy (AP) — Italy’s largest river is already as low as it was last summer, with the winter snow fields that normally save it from drying up over the warmer months having receded by 75 per cent, according to the Bolzano climate and environment agency.

It’s already causing some reliant on the Po to course correct.

“In a few days I will have to cancel all bookings for our Po River cruises because of the shallow water,” said captain Giuliano Landini as he shook his head, his arms stretched wide on the command deck of the Stradivari ship docked under the Boretto bridge and surrounded by long stretches of sand.

His 60-metre (196-foot) long vessel used to transport up to 400 people even on shallow waters, but the flow rate of the river is just 350 cubic metres (92,000 gallons) per second, as low as last June, when conditions were some of the hottest and driest in 70 years.

Navigation will soon become impossible if abundant rainfall doesn’t arrive soon.

The 652-kilometre (405-mile) Po River — which runs from the northwestern city of Turin to Venice on the eastern coast —traverses Italy’s most densely populated, highly industrialised and most intensively farmed part of the country, known as the Italian food valley.

It’s home to fishers and boats, feeds rich farmlands, powers turbines and quenches local populations across its banks and delta. The water also maintains tourism, with world-renowned lakes like Garda and Como crowded every year by millions of international vacationers who love to enjoy fresh clear waters, art and good food. Those who rely on it have often conflicting priorities and are having to scramble for alternative, water-saving plans.

Landini learnt how to swim and steer a boat on the Po river when he was a child.

“I was born on the river, it used to be so alive, full of fishermen and now in a few years we risk having only a sand motorway, I feel sick and anguish seeing the river in such a state,” he said looking at the rivers sandy banks getting closer and closer to his ship.

At the beginning of April, the river level hit a seasonal record 30-year low, with flow rates of one third of the seasonal average, according to the Po basin authority. The surrounding Alps experienced an unusually dry and warm winter so don’t have the snow reserves that would have normally fed the Po and various other tributaries in southern and western Europe in late spring and summer to meet the high water demand for irrigation, drinking and power generation.

Among the once heavily snow-covered peaks are natural and artificial lakes that are already 30 per cent below seasonal average levels, with snow cover 75 per cent below the 10-year seasonal average, explained Flavio Ruffini, director of the Bolzano province climate and environment agency.