By Penelope Galliou

The political confrontation at the level of political leaders is being transferred to the Parliament today, after the Prime Minister’s initiative to inform the body about the implementation of the Government’s initiatives regarding the reconstruction of the regions of Thessaly and Evros and the response to the climate crisis.

Almost three months after the unprecedented floods that caused catastrophic damage in Thessaly, but also the fiery devastation that consumed thousands of acres in the Evros, the prime minister insists on keeping at the top of his agenda and priorities the restoration of the wounds and the gradual return of the regions and of their inhabitants to a normality.

After the autopsy and the relevant research conducted by Dutch experts from HVA International, in matters of water management in Thessaly, the government decided not to delay, but to use every element and “run” with speed and focus the reconstruction of the affected areas from bad weather Daniel.

As a government source commented, the declared goal of the prime minister and the government is that the great environmental and economic disaster that the region of Thessaly suffered, to act as a springboard to reconstruct the region from scratch, with water management, flood protection, cultivation, building projects and critical infrastructure in those areas that are judged to be the most susceptible and vulnerable to new flooding phenomena.

The final Master Plan, expected in February 2024, will include a road map for short- and medium-term interventions, with the aim, as stated, of the efficient operation of irrigation and a flood-resistant Thessaly. “We have received the indication from the Dutch company that we need to change our whole approach around water and flood management but also accept the fact that this redesign will take time and cost money,” a government spokesman recently commented.

The prime minister even set the tone for the initiatives that will be undertaken, as well as the government’s inflexible will for immediate, well-thought-out and effective rehabilitation during his interview on SKAI radio and Aris Portosalte, where he underlined that “the big problem is the management of of water. It was problematic, as the Dutch study shows. A fragmented system, without central control, with projects often done piecemeal without central planning. New projects will need to be done, but I don’t think the solution is necessarily to we are building too many big dams”, said Kyriakos Mitsotakis, among others, predicting at the same time that the redesign will require a lot of time and many millions of euros and therefore cannot be completed overnight.

The main conclusions for Thessaly of the representatives of the specialist Dutch company, HVA International, focus on four axes concerning:

  • The revision of all flood protection plans and infrastructures directly or indirectly related to the management of flood phenomena, in order to respond more adequately to more intense weather phenomena.
  • The need to create a new Early Warning System with revised crisis management protocols, which will clearly define “roles, responsibilities and action plans”
  • The strongest vertically integrated and coherent water management in the Thessaly basin, in a way that will go beyond the administrative boundaries of the Municipalities and take into account the geomorphological and water boundaries of the region with a single decision-making and administration center.
  • The review of fundamental water issues, given that the scarcity of water in Thessaly is equal in severity as a problem to the flooding phenomena themselves.

The prime minister is also expected to refer to the corresponding multi-level planning and implementation of the reconstruction and rehabilitation projects that are already being implemented in the affected areas of the Evros, for which the government, with a successful redistribution of the Recovery Fund resources, has secured 80 million euros in total in order to be absorbed exclusively in rehabilitation, either with direct projects, or with heavier projects, such as flood protection. In any case, however, all interventions are and will be coordinated with the competent services and at the suggestion of the experts.