February 12, 2025

Athens News

News in English from Greece

Hotel pools in Greece will be filled with sea water (video)


This coming summer, Greek hotel pools will be filled with sea water to reduce pressure on fresh water resources during the tourist season.

How reports Euronews Travel, in the Greek Parliament already the relevant bill is being discusseddesigned to help combat drought. The document will present rules for installing pipelines for pumping seawater to and from the pools of coastal hotels.

The purpose of the bill is to save fresh watersays the Deputy Minister of Tourism, it can be used for other urban needs in areas experiencing its shortage:

“This bill regulates the scope of seawater intake and its pumping into basins. Of course, the main goal is to save water resources.”

The reason why Greece needs to save water is obvious: the country has been suffering from severe drought for the past two years. According to a recent study by the Athens National Observatory, between 1971 and 2020, annual precipitation decreased by about 12% compared to 1901-1970.

At the same time, the drought is not a temporary phenomenon, it is not going to recede, and the approaching tourist season will further increase the pressure on resources, especially on the islands, which are popular holiday destinations. The Aegean islands and Crete are among the hardest hit, receiving only a fifth of the rainfall during this period.

Last year Almost 33 million people visited Greecewhich brought in 28.5 billion euros in revenue. As in other European countries, protests against overtourism took place in Greece in 2024, with Greek workers complaining that they were on the verge of collapse. The climate crisis is making the country's tourism model increasingly unsustainable.

The government is under great pressure to rethink what tourism will look like in the future.

It is assumed that hotels will not be required to fill their swimming pools with sea waterhowever, the proposed rules, while introducing restrictions on the use of fresh water, will make it easier for them to build the necessary infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the proposed plan also has critics. They fear that the environment will be damaged due to the draining of water from the pools back into the sea. Although the proposal does not specify quality standards for discharged water, it is known that water in swimming pools must be disinfected using chemicals.

Chlorine is toxic to fish and other marine life, and the discharge of chlorinated salt water can upset the balance of the marine environment by changing salt levelsexperts say. The proposal also does not guarantee that sewage will not flow into the sea, and the construction of pipelines could harm the seabed.

Critics of the bill argue that the impact of the pools on important resources is exaggerated: studies have shown that in Mykonos and Paros, for example, the pools consume only 6% of available fresh water.

And this is information for those who are planning to relax in Greece and have not yet decided where exactly to go:



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