Imagine moving to or living on an island paradise that is transformed almost overnight into a rocky desert garbage dump. If you live in the Apokoronas Municipality or one of the growing Crete Island communities, your dreamscape has metastasized into a nightmare.
The European Travel Commission (ETC) has once again named Greece a “top-five” European travel destination. As for Crete, Greece’s largest island, Condé Nast Traveller reported this year it’s the best destination for families and year-round sunshine.
Crete Becoming Condé Nasty
Unfortunately, Condé Nast and the ETC have not reported the deplorable conditions in villages like Kokkino Chorio, Kampia, Plaka, and even picturesque Almyrida overlooking Souda Bay in Chania Prefecture. However, people running groups like Apokoronas SOS are recording, reporting, and protesting infrastructure disasters that never should have happened.
We recently reported a few times about the waterworks nightmares that residents of this region are experiencing. Local officials ‘ lack of concern and action have contributed heavily to situations where people have gone without water for hundreds of days. On an island in danger of becoming a desert, longtime residents and people who’ve invested their life savings to live on Crete must contend with their paradise becoming an open pit garbage dump.
The most recent Facebook report from Apokoronas SOS amplifies what our investigations revealed earlier this year. Whoever is responsible for waste disposal in the Apokoronas Municipality is not coming close to performing at their job. The whole area is an infrastructure catastrophe waiting to happen. If you read that Crete has some new strain of plague delivered by rats and roach bugs at home in garbage piles, rest assured that Apokoronas is where the disease will have originated. The images I’ve included here do not adequately show how ridiculous the situation is.
Garbage Heap Eden
When we drove to Kalyves some weeks ago to investigate the waterworks disaster, we were also shocked at the level and degree of refuse littering the hillsides of Apokoronas. Though we were focused primarily on the rivers of water flowing downhill or sprouting from broken water lines, it was impossible to miss overflowing dumpsters next door to million-euro villas with Cretan Sea vistas. We contacted the municipality’s Mayor, Haralambos Koukianakis, who’s been in office since 2014. We talked to his assistant, but the questions she suggested we send him went unanswered. However, a Greek Reporter story by this writer was picked up by Apokoronas Life (Greek).
As for Apokoronas, SOS sent us a video from a council meeting where Koukianakis said social media sensationalism was in play. A week or so later, the mayor announced a water project on the other side of the Apokoronas peninsula intended to service an area where a line of five-star resorts are situated. After learning that he and the rest of the council of Apokoronas get free cars and gas, I wrote off getting any lucid (truthful) information from these people. The buddy-buddy system I saw so much of in the United States has been refined into an art here in Greece.
The deplorable situation at Apokoronas characterizes the situation over much of Crete. Water shortages, infrastructure catastrophes, unbridled development by corporate or monied interests, and natural/civic disasters in the making are a travesty. The issues at hand are transforming the island where the legends of Zeus’ birth, the mysterious Minoan civilization, and more legends than anywhere in the world into a filthy Disney World morphed into Miami Beach will rise.
It’s a horror, some of which we are hesitant to show you. Animal parts are being devoured by maggots and flies, a graveyard of bones and carcasses, ruined food, and old mattresses and furniture. Imagine living in the Garden of Eden and having a nasty hell plopped down on top of your dream. This is what’s happening to Crete.
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