Did you really know where the famous viral load measurements that we hear almost every day in the media are made?
The Up Stories team, thanks to the valuable help of his friend G-fly, where he gave us his aerial shots, reveals to a very large part of the inhabitants of the basin who did not know until today the tiny but of great importance for the daily life of the inhabitants of Attica. with the name Psyttalia.
Psyttalia is literally within walking distance from Piraeus, Keratsini, Drapetsona and Perama.
In fact, it is the only island that separates the wider area of Piraeus from Salamina and its operation as a Sewage Treatment Center is so crucial for Attica that many describe it as the “Kidney of Attica”.
In the days before the horrific eruption of the cases due to the Omicron variant and the increase of the viral load in the Attica sewage, we would say that Psyttalia “sank” from the viral load that the scientists detected with their measurements in the sewage.
The Psyttalia Sewage Treatment Center
It would not be an exaggeration to say that he saved the Saronic Gulf from ecological disaster. Until 1994 all the sewage of Attica ended up, through two giant pipes, without treatment, in the sea! But how did we get to this environmental catastrophe?
The first septic tanks appeared in the 1940s. The tankers emptied their contents into larger tanks, the so-called havouzes, which were abolished only in 1985, with the operation of a processing center in Metamorfosi. The first central sewer began to be built shortly before 1960 and led to sewage throughout Athens at the “Akrokeramos” site in Keratsini. The pipeline initially satisfied the residents, but caused significant environmental problems. The Saronic Gulf and the coastal areas west of Piraeus have been under increasing pressure since then and for the next thirty-five years. Things had to change. Greece’s accession to the then EEC had as a result the legal obligation to protect the aquatic environment. Directive 91/271 / EEC required at least secondary wastewater treatment for all settlements with more than 15,000 inhabitants by the end of 2000. Thus, KELD was created, which was close to the site where the network already ended. The center was completed in two phases and today is one of the largest of its kind in the world.
There, after the treatment stages in the large sedimentation tanks, the water returns, for the most part, clean to the sea with two submarine pipelines 1,870 meters long each, located at a depth of 63 meters. The sludge that has precipitated, after processing, becomes a useful biofuel and is channeled to the cement industry. It is distributed in Greece by special tanks and arrives in Cyprus by merchant ship. The processing processes also produce energy for the needs of the facilities that can operate in the so-called island mode, ie completely autonomously for some days, if needed.
The facility receives an average of 700,000 cubic meters of waste daily from Attica and Salamis. The quantity corresponds to the size of a large river! After heavy rains, the volume that passes through the main pipeline of the facility can exceed 1,200,000 cubic meters, with a risk of overflow. Something that can cause problems in the process is the high concentrations in chemical solutions, which destroy the bacterial flora.
Up Stories
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
.
