Greek lakes protected only at official level
5 January, 2012
View on lake Prespa on the border with Albania
ATHENS - In Greece as in other European Union countries, lakes are theoretically protected by a variety of international agreements and protocols, presidential decrees and ministerial decisions, but in reality very little is done to keep them clean in Greece.
The Kathimerini newspaper was told by Maria Moustaka, biology professor at Thessaloniki's Aristotle University, that there is little or no information on the ''health'' of at least 20 of Greece's 50 lakes. This is why - despite the economic difficulties of state coffers due to the crisis, and five years late - in 2012 a programme will be brought in by the Environment Ministry for which a complete register will be drawn up for Greek lakes with all their characteristics included. For years Greece violated the European Commission's framework directive on bodies of water, which oblige EU members to clean their lakes by 2015.
The country has not even managed to draw up a strategy to achieve the objective indicated by the European Union, including initiatives to adopt to prevent pollution as well as to monitor and rehabilitate bodies of water. The most glaring example of this widespread and unpardonable negligence is the pitiful state to which Lake Koronia in the Thessaloniki prefecture has been reduced, for which Greece was brought before the European Court of Justice since it was not able to use the funding made available by the EU for the rehabilitation of the lake and continued to ignore its responsibility to protect an extremely important wet zone fast drying up.
The run-off from fertilisers and pesticides, uncontrolled irrigation in agriculture and the disposal of urban and industrial waste are the main causes of the degradation of Greek lakes. From Lake Vistonida to Lake Prespa, Lake Doirani to Lake Karla, none of the 15 large lakes in Greece can be considered healthy according to a survey conducted by Aristotle University experts, while their concerns over the level of cyanobacteria (''blue algae'') and dangerous cyanotoxins produced by them in lakes have received very little attention both from the national government and from local administrations.
In some cases, like for Lake Kastoria, researchers from the Thessaloniki university discovered that the scientists currently working for the government know less about the lake than what was known 10 years ago, which means that new systematic research into the conditions of the lakes is another issue that must be dealt with. According to Maria Moustaka, who was the head of the most recent survey carried out, ''it seems that little can be done to rehabilitate Lake Doirani in Macedonia since there is insufficient water renewal. No data is available for Lake Prespa, while slight improvement has been seen in Lake Kastoria and Lake Vegoritida.'' The survey also showed that the healthiest internal body of water in Greece was the artificial lake Plastira, near Karditsa in central Greece. However, this is scant consolation for the more generalised disaster.
Source: ANSAMed.
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