- 15 Santorini villages faced water shortages after heavy local use;
- Residents found water pressure nearly non-existent;
- Tourist accommodations and new businesses approved despite the crisis;
- Authorities blame water overconsumption, not infrastructure;
- Emergency overnight water cut scheduled for the Oia area;
- Officials downplay the severity, citing negative media attention;
- Other Cycladic islands saw similar rain-fueled issues;
- Tourism remains the primary concern in official statements.
Fifteen picturesque villages, the bread and butter of vacation photo albums, have been battling more than just the summer heat. For two days, locals have watched their taps cough up little more than a faint whisper of water. The pressure, both literal and figurative, has hit historic lows, just in time for another surge of tourist arrivals.
Residents didn’t mince words on TV. “Water comes drop by drop and the flow is very thin,” one local remarked, presumably after making coffee with whatever dribbled in overnight. Yet, oddly, business continues as usual. Permits for new hotels and bars keep appearing like mushrooms after rain, even as existing taps run dry.
Business owners have learned to adapt. As Spyros Filippoy, a restaurant owner, expressed with the calm of a man who’s seen everything: “The fact that the infrastructure is being pressured is nothing new. The problem started at noon on Monday and we were called upon to absorb it as much as we can. Now there is a small flow, which we do not know how long it will last.” He didn’t stop there, highlighting a decade-old pattern, “The problem has intensified in the last decade. This raises questions about how new accommodations, beds, businesses, restaurants are licensed when there is not enough for the existing ones.”
Officials offered an explanation so creative it belongs in the museum alongside ancient pottery. According to the guardians of Santorini’s water, a muddy rainfall inspired a spontaneous cleaning frenzy. Citizens took their hoses to cars, roofs, and presumably any surface not nailed down, resulting in what they called “overconsumption.” It is as if the island collectively forgot how not to waste water for 48 hours.
The Official Spin: It’s Not a Crisis, It’s a Feature
The municipal water company, DEYATH, stepped up with a formal announcement that read like a love letter to damage control: “There will be a water supply interruption in the wider area of Oia during the night hours from 24:00 on Wednesday 28/05 to 07:00 on Thursday 29/05 due to the situation created by the excessive consumption observed after the rainfall with African dust until today, resulting in the depletion of reserves in the existing water supply tanks and an emergency failure in the seawater supply system of the Oia desalination plant.”
Translation: Don’t plan on a midnight shower, Oia.
But let’s not panic, they assure us. The same press release claims, “the overwhelming percentage of the settlements of our islands (Santorini and Thirasia) do not face any water supply problem as is falsely reported, as well as to assure consumers that there is no issue of adequacy during the summer season.” If you’re dry, you don’t exist in their statistics.
It isn’t only Santorini facing such oddities. Similar “weather-related cleaning sprees” appeared across other Cycladic islands and even Heraklion, Crete. Still, officials are adamant: nowhere else did this reach the mythic status found here, the island’s thirst outclassed only by its reputation for negative press.
Santorini, the announcement claims, suffers from the “target of malicious publications in recent years, culminating in the recent seismic activity.” There is little irony lost in their plea: “Let us all rise to the occasion and, within a framework of consensus and cooperation, let us protect both the quality of life of citizens and visitors as well as the tourism product, which contributes a very large percentage to both the GDP and the country’s international visibility.”
The message? Buckets up, tourists. The show must go on, even if the taps say otherwise. For a place that thrives on postcard perfection, the struggle to deliver more water than rumor could not be more on-brand.
