Overtourism in Halkidiki has affected water and electricity supply as well the biological cleaning networks. Black outs are daily, locals, tourists and professionals are angry.
Faucets ran dry, the circuit breakers went down and the biological cleaning “short-circuited” for another year in Halkidiki due to overtourism, daily ethnos.gr reported citing local authorities.
Water supply problems are almost both in the municipality of Sithonia and in the municipality of Kassandra, while entire settlements are regularly plunged into darkness, disturbing operations in the local community, in the everyday life of tourists and in the operation of businesses and hotels.
The problem becomes more intense when there is a heatwave as the network suffers due to the high temperature while high demand is also recorded then.
The mayors of the region are engaged in a race, appealing to the residents for good management in order for the networks to meet the demand for water and electricity and to avoid collapsing.
The municipal council of Sithonia decided to send an out-of-court protest to electricity distributor DEDIHE for the continuous black-outs, while the organization is in court after a lawsuit filed against it by the Chamber of Professinals of Halkidiki.
“When our infrastructure is for 13,000 permanent residents and today we are hosting more than 100,000 you realize that there is a titanic effort and struggle to cover all these people who are coming for holidays,” mayor of Sithonia, Kyparissis Deblas, told ethnos.gr.
The problems are focused on how to secure water for them, how we will make good use of our biological cleaning, how we will cope with cleanliness and our everyday life” the mayor stressed adding: “Indeed, I am noticing some problems and some decrease in water. For example, in Marmaras, in the afternoon hours when most tourists return from the beach and swim, there is a problem.”
Kassandra also faces water problems due to over-consumption.
According to the mayor of the region, Anastasia Chalkia. “More than 600,000 tourists have passed through Kassandra, while our population is 15,000. There is not enough water.”
Polychrono, Hanioti and Pefkohori receive the largest volume of tourists and face the most problems.
“We appeal to the citizens not to water the lawns, not to wash the streets and not to waste water unnecessarily,” the mayor added.
The areas of Nea Triglia in the Municipality of Nea Propontida as well as Ormylia in the Municipality of Polygyros are on alert, because their water potential cannot cover the high demand due to intensive agricultural crops.
Water consumption in the Municipality of Nea Propontida also increases significantly in the summer due to the tourists.
Solving the issue of water supply in the prefecture of Halkidiki is becoming even more difficult, after the cancellation of the tender for the dam of the river Havria, a project which, in the first phase, would have adequately supplied water to central and southern Halkidiki. The tender for the project with a budget of 105 million euros also ended without positive result after 4 extensions, as the three interested companies refrained from submitting proposals, ethnos.gr noted.
PS One day Greece will realize that investing only in tourism will not a sustainable economic solution because overtourism will have created more problems than the country can/want to deal with.