Greece maps out 20-year, €3.4 billion national water strategy

Amid rising summer temperatures, the Greek government has mapped out a visionary 20-year, €3.4 billion strategy to better manage and conserve the country’s water resources. The plan dramatically expands the roles of the country’s two major water utilities, consolidates a nationally fragmented water management network, details 901 infrastructure projects, and empowers a reformed regulatory authority to monitor implementation and compliance.

Greece currently has more than 735 different bodies that manage water supply, sewerage and irrigation issues, with different capabilities and capacities. That leads to overlapping responsibilities, increased operating costs, ineffective water management, losses and waste.

Meanwhile, Greece is facing growing risk of water scarcity. The warming climate is depleting water supplies at a faster rate: until 2021, reserves in Greek reservoirs were stable, at 1.1 billion cubic meters. But starting in 2022, that supply has been steadily falling below replenishment rates by 250 million cubic meters per year.

The goal of the unified National Water Strategy is to curb high water loss, and empowers the Regulatory Authority for Energy, Water and Waste (RAEWW) to oversee compliance. Specifically, the new strategy expands the operating areas of the Athens (EYDAP) and Thessaloniki (EYATH) water utilities and brings roughly 60 local water utilities under their umbrella, aiming to improve efficiency, investment capacity and access to infrastructure funding.

The new National Water Strategy covers more than 170 municipalities overall – more than half of Greece’s municipalities – and is the umbrella strategy that incorporates various parts of the government’s multifaceted water management program.

Over the past three years, the government has also introduced targeted management strategies for drinking water supplies, river basin management and flood risk management. It has also introduced other reforms, including the establishment of RAEWW, setting out new pricing guidelines and mandating new operating plans for local water management authorities.