Lots of water fell, but supplies are still short
The rains that fell on Greece this winter were far heavier than usual and helped fill dams and raise the subterranean water table, but the fact that there are too few reservoirs means that Athens still has water to meet its needs for less than a year, officials say. «There is water for eight to 10 months. After that, we will have problems again because the average of available water remains low,» the principal of the National Technical University of Athens, Themistocles Xanthopoulos, told Kathimerini. The heavy rains resulted in Athens water company EYDAP’s reservoirs containing 1,115.89 million cubic meters of water, as opposed to 532.65 million at the same time last year. The water table has risen to its highest level in 15 years, from between 10 meters and 60 meters, depending on the area, Nikos Kourmoulis, a water specialist at the Institute for Geological Studies, said.
