“The country has been launching a large cohesive irrigation project since the 1960s,” PM Mitsotakis said during his speech at the Integrated Infrastructure Program for Rural Development and Mitigation of the Impacts of the Climate Crisis through (Public & Private Partnerships (PPPs) on Monday evening, continuing “and today we have the financial tools to be able in different conditions, more difficult, due to climate change, to implement a project that has a pan-Hellenic footprint and faces chronic problems of lack of irrigation water in many parts of the country.”

He pointed out that each of the works presented had its own local significance. “I know how important for the plain of Xanthi the work of moving the waters of Nestos is, a work that has been discussed for decades. Also, the work of Tavropos is of great importance because we do not only need to build new dams, we also need to intervene in the irrigation networks themselves, to modernize them. Because we know that one of the biggest problems in water management is not only the fact that water is scarce in some areas of the country, it also concerns the losses, especially in the water transmission networks, the most obsolete. A large part of about 80% of the water that is directed to irrigation is lost because we do not have the necessary know-how and modern networks to reduce losses,” he said.