Too many tourists on the same popular islands – especially Santorini and Mykonos – is putting a severe strain on their infrastructure, particularly water, where residents are competing for supplies with foreign visitors.

The effects of drought, climate change and longer and hotter weather, including record heat waves, are adding to the problem, now reaching islands such as Sifnos, where officials want curbs on swimming pools – but not gardens yet.

At one point, Sifnos ran out of water and had to turn to desalination units to convert seawater to fresh water for its 2,600 residents and thousands of tourists who have discovered it, said The New York Times in a feature on water.

One of the four units broke down in June, leaving some homes and vacation rentals without water for 10 days, perhaps a preview of what could be coming to other islands, limits being planned for cruise ship arrivals on Santorini and Mykonos.

On Sifnos, “It was a disaster,” Roula Katselou, 50, a resident of Exambela, one of the largest villages, told the paper.  “We could not shower, cook or clean. We had to carry buckets of water from our neighbors who had cisterns and buy bottled water to wash the children.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/travel/greece-water-shortages.html

Nikos Galatas, 37, was renting out his parents’ vacation home to an Italian couple when the water was cut, and after reserves in his water tank ran out, he said they moved to another part of the island.

“I lost a lot of money because they had booked the house for 12 days,” Galatas said. “And it was very stressful to find a suitable alternative when so many of the accommodations were booked up.”

The broken desalination unit was fixed but there were curbs on water usage as the hordes of tourists kept coming, the government urging visitors to visit islands other than Santorini, Mykonos, Crete, Corfu and Rhodes.

The problem has become acute on Greek’s most visited islands as the country looks to be on a path for a second straight record year of tourism, which could see more than 35 million tourists, a 7 percent jump from 2023’s record.

From June and August this year, Sifnos – with a population of 2,777 – got more than 100,000 tourists, up from 67,000 in 2014, and had to declare a State of Emergency over the water shortage.

Sifnos isn’t alone. Nearby Serifos, as well as Kefalonia, Leros and even Crete – the country’s biggest island – also declared water emergencies this summer when wells and reservoirs dried up during blistering temperatures and almost no rain.

“We have reached our limit,” Deputy Mayor Manolis Foutoulakis, in charge of the water system, told the paper. “During the tourism peak in August, I was watching the water levels go down and down and signing the cross, praying that we would get by,” he said.

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE

If the summer of 2025 sees more drought he said it could happen again and get worse, and he’s asked the government for another desalination unit but that could take years to deliver and put into operation.

“We welcome tourists, but if we have no water, we will have no choice but to send them away,” Foutoulakis said, but the state hasn’t imposed stringent curbs on water use as it’s luring luxury resorts that feature swimming pools, and there’s been no limit on watering gardens, crucial in villages.

Island officials said the biggest problem – apart from nature – is the government’s pursuit of more luxury resorts and hotels that are draining water supplies, tourism revenues so far trumping the worries.

Sifnos Mayor Maria Nadali said many properties overconsume water and without a centralized water management plan that officials there are dealing with the problem largely on their own and can’t regulate use.

“The new constructions are required to have water tanks,” she said, but “some of them put a door and window on the tanks and make them into tourist rooms to rent. It is a big problem because the municipality then has to supply water to these properties outside of the residential zones.”

Elissavet Feloni, an Adjunct Lecturer at the department of Surveying and Geoinformatics Engineering at the University of West Attica, in Aigaleo, Greece, said many new hotels have expansive lawns and gardens that are not suitable for dry islands. “We should promote gray water recycling to reuse water for irrigation and generally non potable purposes,” she said.

In late June, on Serifos, a wildfire destroyed houses and severely damaged the water infrastructure. “We consumed a significant amount of water in order to put out the fire,” said Mayor Konstantinos Revinthis.

Environment and Energy Minister Theodoros Skylakakis said the government is acting, including drilling for groundwater, more desalination units for islands and repairing water networks but there aren’t plans to limit usage so far.

Some islands urged people to take shorter showers and use bowls to wash up instead of letting taps run but tourists aren’t generally being told about curbing how much water they use despite the problem.

When Sifnos’ desalination unit broke down, Yorgos Vassalos, 63, the owner of a local market, said that tourists who came to buy bottled water were shocked that there was no backup plan.

“Even when the water came back, it was on and off and it was brown and reddish in color, which concerned the tourists,” he said. “They bought big bottles of water so that they could wash themselves.”

Flora Manou, a resident, said there’s too many tourists and not enough water. “Tourists are very welcome, but some people are becoming greedy, turning every part of the island into a hotel,” she said. “If it continues at this rate, then we, too, will be banging our heads against the wall like Mykonos or Santorini.”