This brings me back to what I wrote in this article about the historical management of water resources in the Eastern Alps. The focus there was precisely on the management of a resource – water – that in many of these valleys has often been taken for granted, to the point that historically the problem was having too much of it rather than too little. Now, however, the situation seems to be turning on its head: from “the effects of wild waters in the bare mountain area above” [1], we have moved on to chemical toilets. I know, the contrast sounds jarring, but this may well be the kind of situation we should expect more often in the coming years.

The fact that this is not simply an oddity of this particular summer is also shown by the measures already introduced in recent years. Following the 2022 drought, the Italian Alpine Club specifically funded projects aimed at making mountain huts more resilient to water scarcity: storage tanks, water-capture systems, rainwater and greywater recovery, flow restrictors and dry toilets. In the 2022 and 2023 funding rounds alone, almost €483,000 was allocated to interventions involving 77 mountain huts [2]. These figures point to a fairly simple conclusion: water scarcity at altitude is no longer being treated as a one-off exception, but as a problem that must increasingly be taken seriously.

Indeed, substantial investments have been made in recent years both to protect slopes and mountainsides from excess water and to allow rainwater to be collected by facilities without stable connections to water networks. Yet all of this becomes of limited use if – in a summer such as this one – water simply does not fall from the sky.

And this brings me back to the places in our example, because in the mountains water is about far more than just flushing a toilet.

For tourist facilities such as mountain huts, water is first and foremost an essential resource for both visitors and the managers who live and work there. And, as the Italian Alpine Club has also pointed out, bathrooms are among the largest sources of water consumption. In times of drought, this means fewer showers, fewer toilet flushes and fewer guests. This is precisely the kind of management strategy reflected in the post from Rifugio Papa. Dry toilets – including chemical toilets – and water supplies brought up from the valley, by truck where possible or otherwise by helicopter, become the last, and costly, options before closure.

For malghe, however, the situation is, in my view, even more complex.

A malga – an alpine dairy farm and grazing system – is an inseparable combination of structures, people and animals: a pasture, a dairy building, a herd or flock, a cheesemaker, the person managing the alpine grazing operation and, in some cases, a small kitchen serving visitors.

Everything, however, ultimately revolves around the animals and the pasture, without which a malga simply ceases to be one.

In this case, water is not merely something needed for the bathroom or the kitchen; it becomes an integral part of the entire production system. First and foremost, it is vital for watering livestock, whose needs increase precisely as temperatures rise. But it is also essential for the pasture itself, whose vegetation can suffer during prolonged periods of drought – although the severity of this stress varies according to plant composition, soil characteristics, exposure and rooting depth.

Then there is the milk. Dairy production at altitude requires water to clean the premises, equipment, milking systems and processing facilities. The issue, therefore, is not simply whether there is enough water for the animals to drink: without an adequate water supply, milk cannot even be processed under proper hygienic conditions.

Water scarcity can therefore affect every component of a malga at the same time. It reduces the availability of forage, makes watering livestock more difficult and complicates milk processing. Beyond a certain point, the farmer may be forced to bring the cows back down into the valley, end dairy production at altitude ahead of schedule and abandon the pasture before the planned end of the grazing season.

And this is no minor detail. An alpine grazing season that ends early does not simply mean a few fewer wheels of cheese. It means changing grazing pressure, leaving part of the available forage unused, altering the management of areas that are often kept open precisely through grazing, and, above all, putting economic pressure on an activity that already operates under challenging logistical conditions.

This is perhaps the aspect that should give us the most pause. Water scarcity in the mountains does not remain confined inside an empty storage tank. It spreads. First it reaches the tap in the mountain hut, then the kitchen, then the bookings. At the malga, it moves from the drinking trough to the pasture, from milking to the dairy. And ultimately it changes, in very practical terms, the way those mountains can be visited, worked and maintained.

That is why a notice posted by a mountain hut in the Pasubio is not relevant only to those who had planned to stop there for dinner. It is a very tangible sign of a mountain environment in which a resource we are accustomed to considering permanently available can suddenly become the factor that determines how many visitors can be accommodated, how many animals can remain at altitude and even how long an entire season can last.

And all of this because, once again this year, the rain just does not come…

Cover image: Alpine pasture pond near Malga Pidocchio di Sopra (Lessinia, Municipality of Erbezzo, Verona, Italy). Photo: Author. 22.07.2025