It struck me yesterday when I was walking Skilos that we are literally surrounded by water… Not the sea, which needs considerable amounts of energy to turn into usable water but all the water stored in empty properties.
If you think about it for a moment…
Each empty property has 1,000 litres of water sitting in their cold storage tank and an additional 250 litres in their hot tank.
In addition, if they have a pool there is another ~50,000 litres sitting there doing nothing?
In my own street alone, a development of just nine properties there are seven currently standing empty – two unsold and the others ‘holiday’ homes. Of those, four have pools. So, just in our street along (a tiny portion of Pissouri) there is ~200,000 litres of water standing ‘unused’.
If you multiply that by all the unsold or otherwise unused properties on the island the amount of water standing idle must run into millions and millions of litres.
Now, I’m not suggesting that it is practical to go around with a big tanker collecting the hot and cold water from each empty apartment but in time of crisis surely some basic legislation could be applied that prevented unused properties being ‘filled-up’ and unused pools being filled/maintained would save a considerable amount of water?
What thinks you lot?