No anxiety about Attica’s water supply until 2030
If no extensive drought intervenes and the Athens Water Company (EYDAP) deals with the leaks in its network, Attica’s water supply is guaranteed for the next 25 years. The diversion of the Evinos River to the Mornos Dam, on which work began in 1992 and was completed 10 years later, is expected to meet Attica’s need for drinking water until at least 2030. Reserves are now at record levels, as EYDAP’s reservoirs at Mornos, Yliki, Marathon and Evinos currently hold more than 1.2 billion cubic meters of water, when daily requirements are around 1 million cubic meters. In March 1993, with a water shortage looming, the price of water shot up and there was a campaign to limit use, encouraging people to adjust their toilet cisterns to flush less water, reserves stood at 160 million cubic meters, seven times less than today’s level. EYDAP claims that not even the planned extension of the water supply to the Mesogeia area will significantly increase consumption as the water used in areas such as Rafina, Loutsa and Spata comes from the company’s distilleries. It is also considered highly unlikely that businesses with high water consumption will be set up in Attica (on the contrary, further deindustrialization is probable), hence pressure on water reserves is a matter for the inhabitants and their environmental conscience. As World Water Day was celebrated yesterday, that precious resource was leaking away somewhere between its source and out spigots; leakages and losses from the EYDAP grid amount to between 18 and 20 percent. EYDAP seems to have fallen behind in dealing with this problem, and pilot programs set up to establish whether the system needs modernization have been left incomplete. These used mathematical models to record the frequency of breakdowns in the branches of the water supply that could be upgraded, but they have been left unimplemented due to the company’s financial difficulties. However, the EYDAP press office told Kathimerini, «Even modern grids, such as the one in Paris, have leakages of up to 12 percent.» The quality of the network is often responsible for the quality of the water that comes out of our taps. The company says the water is perfectly clean when it leaves the distillery and attributes the problems that occur to the subsequent journey. The quality of Athens’s water, which is generally considered as good, derives from the quality of the unprocessed water collected in the four reservoirs. It is surface runoff from areas without polluting activities, in contrast with some of the major rivers in northern Europe which are heavily polluted. Apart from monitoring water color and clarity, EYDAP’s laboratories regularly monitor 50 different chemical and microbiological factors. EYDAP President Sifis Glyniadakis says: «We are proud of the quality of the water we provide to our customers. Anyone who wants to can get a glass of water from the tap and take it to a lab for analysis.»
