Athens Has A Water Problem, So They Looked Back To The Ancients For Answers

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It’s been one other 12 months of record-breaking warmth and dwindling rainfall in Greece. Lake ranges have noticeably receded. Struggles within the agriculture sector to irrigate make crop manufacturing tenuous. Wildfires have sophisticated water shortage issues, as a result of, as firefighters battle the infernos, the water they use depletes already weakened provides. Water reservoirs for Athens are at their lowest ranges in over a decade — each single one of many better Athens space’s recent supplementary water sources, such because the Evinos reservoir and the small lakes of Yliki and Marathon, have recorded diminished water portions.

Successive years of inadequate rainfall have been sophisticated by higher-than-ever water consumption — practically 35 million guests flock to the realm yearly. The arid soil soaks up each drop of rain that falls. Residents have turned to monks to implore the heavens for rain.

What will be completed to resolve an age-old water drawback in Athens’ modern, fast-paced society? Definitely, investing in fashionable water-sourcing measures corresponding to a brand new synthetic lake and desalination models is a assist. However extra is required to complement the water provide, assist cool areas by irrigating inexperienced areas, and, as Katerina Dimitrou of Athens Water Provide and Sewerage Co. says, “create a new water culture.”

In response, Athens has appeared to resolve the brand new water instability issue with an current older asset. The town moms and dads are within the strategy of reviving an historical aqueduct — a 15-mile, largely underground community that also runs beneath the town. The aqueduct reclamation undertaking is so highly effective that it gained worldwide popularity of city innovation and is serving as a mannequin for different European cities.

An Aqueduct for the Ages

Europe’s longest useful underground aqueduct dates again to when Greece was a part of the Roman Empire. The Roman emperor Hadrian (117–138 CE) gave the nod to many main public works that had been vital to Athens — such because the undertaking that got here to be generally known as the Hadrian aqueduct. Students describe the traditional aqueduct as a masonry channel in an underground tunnel virtually 20 km. lengthy.

The aqueduct tunnel was constructed manually by stable rock by lots of of employees, in all probability slaves, utilizing easy instruments corresponding to chisels and hammers. The underground tunnel sections had been constructed in rectangular formed venues with an arched cowl with sq. and round shafts at intervals for cleansing and air flow. The aqueduct collected water from each an preliminary supply and different sources alongside its route, and the water was transported by gravity to a stone reservoir on the hill of Lykabettos within the metropolis of Athens.

The construction efficiently provided Athens with water for hundreds of years, with the mere exception of the interval wherein the Ottomans occupied Greece and broken the aqueduct.

Athens Agrees to Strive Out Various Water Options

Quick ahead to the early twentieth century and the development of Athens’ first main dam, which appeared to fulfill the rising metropolis’s demand for water. The aqueduct turned ignored for over a century and practically deserted. Nonetheless, it’s now been established that it nonetheless is useful as a non-potable water supply because it carries water from riverbanks and aquifers alongside a sloping route.

“It still works, but the water is wasted,” said Christos Giovanopoulos, a undertaking supervisor on the native authority of Halandri, an Athens suburb that may be a testing floor for the initiative, as reported by the New York Occasions. Channels and tunnels are nonetheless preserved within the Olympic Village. “It flows all the way to the central reservoir and then joins the sewage system and is expelled into the sea. Nobody uses it.”

A brand new two-and-a-half-mile pipeline has been constructed which is able to faucet into the aqueduct. By March houses, faculties, and parks can have a brand new water supply for laundry and gardening, which is able to assist preserve consuming water. Irrigating inexperienced areas alongside the aqueduct route will provide a pure cooling impact.

The aqueduct, which has been mainly operational all alongside, is changing into reutilized for irrigation functions, thus changing using potable water that was used earlier than. “You can discourage people from using water or encourage them to use other sources,” Giovanopoulos added. “This is more positive.”

Properties closest to the pipeline will likely be straight related, and people farther away will likely be provided by vehicles. The water will likely be free for the primary six months.

“We have an ancient monument and feat of engineering that we’re bringing into the present to save water and cool the city,” Dimitrou defined, elaborating on the work that has been completed to this point in collaboration with the Tradition Ministry and native authorities to revive the aqueduct.

From Aqueduct to Consciousness of Water’s Shortage

The aqueduct revitalization undertaking could ultimately prolong to seven extra municipalities and save round 250 million gallons of water per 12 months. Whereas this doesn’t start to offset the greater than 100 billion gallons of water a 12 months utilized in Athens, the aqueduct will infuse a forward-looking perspective as a part of the bigger objective to immediate a broader shift in mentality will take time.

The City Progressive Motion describes one of many undertaking’s many objectives, which is to activate native “Hidden Heritage Potential to enhance Local Wellbeing” (HIDRANT). The initiative sees the aqueduct undertaking as a automobile to disclose native cultural capital, tangible and intangible heritage, and pure and human-made assets. The group revitalization will function as an modern solution to re-introduce a Roman monument of excessive cultural and pure significance.

Together with the repositioning of the aqueduct, the initiative promotes inexperienced city insurance policies and sustainable water management. It creates new high quality inexperienced public areas by regenerating 4 neighborhoods.

Native authorities and a nonprofit group are working to raise awareness concerning the aqueduct by main excursions of ground-level landmarks such because the central reservoir, which guests can view by home windows on its facade.“ Many residents now admit to former habits of leaving the shower running but are now “anxious” about how a lot water they’ll use,” stated Christidou, a member of Hadrian Group, an affiliation lobbying for residents to handle the distribution of the aqueduct’s water.

The pilot undertaking is being supported by 3.1 million euros (about $3.3 million) in European Union funding.