Athens Mayor Dora Bakoyiannis said in a radio interview she was not sure the city’s water company will be able to meet peak demand for water during the 2004 Athens Games.
The water company was put to the test during the recent heavy snowfall in Athens. The Mayor said her confidence in Athens water company was shaken when part of the city was left without running water during the snowstorm.
Bakoyiannis asked during the interview, “we will have 1.5 to two million visitors during the Olympics who will very likely consume water at the same time of day. How will the network cope with such a big demand (during the Olympic) when it didn’t cope with a single snowfall?”
The water company EYDAP has calculated that water consumption during the Games will reach 1.7 million cubic metres, said the Mayor.
Meanwhile Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, president of the Athens Organising Committee, has told critics of the Games preparations that it does not matter if projects are delayed as long as they are delivered before August 13.
But the Kathimerini newspaper wrote in a recent editorial, “our country won the bid to organize the Games in 1997. We knew the difficulties involved, we had all the time to assess the scope of the endeavour. But the country was caught up in grandiose plans like Calatrava’s roof and now we are struggling to find patchwork solutions to problems that were caused by our own frivolity and foot-dragging”.
