Water crisis in southern Greece deteriorates with the drainage supply of LECKS

“You can smell the difference in the water, feel dryness on your clothes,” said Lydia Sarakinioti, a jeweler in Naflion, which even uses water for cooking.

This month, the EU started a campaign to combat a water crisis operated by climate change, which already affects 38% of its population. By the next year, the EU countries have existed to evaluate the leaks before a legal threshold is imposed.

The program to increase water security is expected to cost hundreds of billions of euros, since countries in southern Europe experience irregular rainfall and hotter temperatures in connection with climate change.

The situation in Greece, which lies on the cheeks of Europe's Southern Frontier, shows how complex and expensive changes will be. Last summer and winter, the warmest and many places were not a precipitation for months.

In addition, a paralyzing debt crisis in 2009-18 led to years of sub-investment. Greece loses about half of its drinking water from leaky pipes and theft. Most cards of the underground pipeline network are either not digitized or do not exist, experts and civil servants said.

Greece has spent more than 1.5 billion euros on drinking water infrastructure since 2019, the government said. But Argolida, an agricultural center that produces about a third of the orange of Greece, shows much more.

“There are many problems and we are trying to gradually tackle them,” said Socrates Doris, head of the Nafplion's urban drinking water provider. He said that the company was aiming for EU financing to help.

Prime Minister Kyriako's Mitsotakis promised to solve Argolida's water problems when he visited November, including the expansion of the irrigation network and the provision of a desalination unit to dissolve salts in water.

Government officers say that basic corrections are first needed.

“If the network of a area licks everywhere, what does it work to buy a new desalination unit or drill a well?” said Petros Varelidis, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Environment for Water Resources.

Licks in some areas reach 80%, he said.

“The needs are much larger than the available resources.”

Bad water

In Argolida, the water shortage leads to poor water quality. When the lake feeds Nafplion, the authorities increase it with brackish water from a U -boat source, Anavalos.

Tests that were commissioned by the water authorities observed by Reuters from June to November 2022-24 showed a higher than permissible chlorides and sodium in these sources, which can influence people with blood pressure or kidney problems.

Nafplion is not alone. In the coastal city of Ermioni, only 8% of the 13,500 inhabitants have permanent access to safe drinking water, according to the data of the local authorities that were submitted to the parliament.

Most residents rely on plastic water in bottles, which causes their own environmental problems.

“The quality is really bad. It damages electrical appliances like the washing machine,” said Evi Leventi, 58.

Outside the city, in fields that have dried through two years of drought, the farmers dig up to 300 meters below the surface in search of water. It often comes too salty because the sea water is seeped into exhausted underground water conductors.

“Every drop of water is indispensable … we hope our hopes for rainy winter,” said farmer George Mavras.

(Additional reporting by Louisa Gouliamaki; Editor of Edward McAllister, Alexandra Hudson)