Heraklion: five districts without water

Five districts of Heraklion faced water supply problems on Thursday 20 August, following a prolonged power cut at the Keri borehole field. As the Heraklion Municipal Water Supply and Sewerage Company announced and politica.gr reported, the loss of power at the pumping stations took a large part of the company’s boreholes out of service, causing pressure in the network to drop. The areas where problems were recorded are Agia Aikaterini, Therisos, Kaminia, Pateles and Filothei. DEYAH advised residents to make strictly rational use of water, so that existing reserves are preserved until the power supply is restored.

The company clarified that the return of the water supply will not be instant. Even after the fault is repaired by the electricity network operator, a reasonable amount of time is needed to restart the boreholes and to refill the network fully, so that pressure returns to normal levels in every neighbourhood. In practice this means that higher-lying areas and the upper floors of apartment blocks are restored last. For information on the distribution schedule, DEYAH directed the public to the telephone number 2810 339050 and to its website. No estimate was given for the time of full restoration, nor any detail on the cause of the power cut. The announcement refers to repeated outages at the Keri field, without clarifying whether this is the same fault recurring or a series of independent incidents.

The incident is not isolated, and that is where its significance for the city lies. Heraklion’s water supply depends to a large extent on boreholes operated by electric pumps: every power cut at the field translates immediately into a lack of water at the tap, without a single pipe having burst. The same pattern has been recorded recently at Rodia, where power cuts have been straining the water supply network, while at Mesampelies residents had been left with water problems for a week. At the peak of August, with demand at its highest level of the year, the margin for absorbing such a fault is minimal. The five districts affected lie in the southern and western fabric of the city, in densely inhabited areas with a significant range of elevation, where a drop in pressure is felt immediately. At the same time, the same networks have to cover summer tourist demand in the accommodation of the city centre.

The question that remains open is whether this is a circumstantial problem of the electricity distribution network or a recurring weakness that requires a permanent solution, such as back-up generator sets at the critical pumping stations. Neither DEYAH nor the network operator has announced any such planning. Until then, the instruction to residents remains the same one heard more and more often this year: limit consumption to what is absolutely necessary. More from the area on the Heraklion page.