Drought in Greece causes submerged village to rise from the waters

Abandoned buildings in the sunken village of Kallio in Greece have recently reappeared as the level of a reservoir has dropped dramatically due to the country’s prolonged drought. The reservoir is the main water reservoir for Athens and the surrounding area.

Aerial images of the artificial lake of Mornos in central Greece on Wednesday, September 4, give a strange and fascinating feeling. Illuminated by the late afternoon light, a small piece of land emerges from the water, and one can make out some vestiges of a past life.

That of the village of Kallio, submerged in the 70s, when the authorities decided to create this artificial reservoir, to supply water to the entire region of Athens. At the time, the inhabitants of this small village were ordered to abandon their homes, and it is these walls, covered in dried mud, that can be observed in recent days, those who knew this past life even recognizing for some a ground floor, or the ruins of the primary school of the time.

Because months of drought have caused the lake level to drop by 40 metres in one year, revealing these remains and causing concern among authorities and residents throughout the Athens region, more than 200 kilometres away.

This reservoir is in fact the main reservoir of the capital and its region, Attica and its 3.7 million inhabitants, or about a third of the Greek population. The need for water is greater today than ever, the reserves of the Mornos reservoir are vital, but their level has decreased by 30% in recent months, due to the heat and the lack of precipitation.

A situation to which the government is responding timidly, calling on the population to be reasonable without taking drastic measures or developing prevention policies. NGOs denounce the negligence of the authorities, incapable according to them of grasping the gravity of the situation, at the end of a summer season that turned into a nightmare in the country. Historic heat records marked June and July, unprecedented fires followed in August, when the flames threatened Athens and ravaged 10,000 hectares of forests, forests that for the most part had not been cleared last winter…