Travelling to Greece this summer? Your hotel swimming pool could be filled with seawater
As tourism places stress on freshwater sources, Greece is contemplating different choices to maintain lodge swimming pools stuffed.
Resort swimming pools in Greece might be full of seawater this summer time because the nation’s parliament debates new laws to deal with drought.
It proposes rules for putting in pipelines to pump seawater out and in of swimming swimming pools at coastal accommodations. The purpose is to offer the choice of saving water that might be used for different city makes use of in areas which might be going through shortages.
“This (laws) regulates the framework for finishing up seawater extraction and pumping it for swimming swimming pools,” Elena Rapti, a deputy minister of tourism advised a parliament committee.
“The main target, after all, is to preserve water sources.”
Why does Greece want to save lots of water?
Over the past two years, Greece has been struggling underneath acute drought circumstances. The nation has seen its annual rainfall lower by round 12 per cent between 1971 and 2020 in comparison with 1901 to 1970, in accordance with a current research from the Nationwide Observatory of Athens.
The drought circumstances present little signal of relenting and the upcoming tourism season will add additional pressure to sources – particularly on islands which might be well-liked vacation locations. The Aegean Islands and Crete are among the worst affected with a fifth of their rainfall having disappeared.
Final yr, Greece attracted nearly 33 million guests, producing €28.5 billion in income.
Like plenty of different European international locations, vacationers had been focused by overtourism protests in 2024 with Greek staff saying they had been at breaking level. The local weather disaster can also be making the nation’s tourism mannequin more and more unsustainable.
The federal government has come underneath growing stress to reimagine what tourism will appear like sooner or later.
Lodges received’t be pressured to fill their swimming pools with seawater however the proposed rules would make it simpler for them to assemble the infrastructure to take action if water utilization restrictions are put in place.
Why are some individuals in opposition to the plan to save lots of water?
The plan to preserve water has critics involved about environmental harm from what is likely to be pumped out again into the ocean.
There aren’t any high quality requirements for the discharge of water within the proposal – regardless of seawater swimming pools nonetheless needing to be disinfected with chemical compounds.
Chlorine, generally used to disinfect swimming pools, is poisonous to fish and different animals and the chlorinated saltwater discharge may upset the stability of the marine surroundings by altering salt ranges, they are saying.
In addition to this, the proposal fails to ensure that sewage received’t find yourself within the water. Establishing the pipelines may additionally do harm to the seafloor.
Some additionally argue that the affect of swimming pools on essential sources has been overstated with research exhibiting that on islands like Mykonos and Paros, swimming pools devour simply 6 per cent of accessible water.
