The port city of Volos in central Greece has declared a state emergency after floodwaters washed up with dead fish, which local residents say could threaten their livelihoods, the state news agency announced on Saturday.
The month-long emergency declaration issued by the Climate Ministry’s Secretary-General for Civil Protection Vassilis Papageorgiou will provide funds and resources to speed up the clean-up of the Pagasetic Gulf port, where tonnes of dead fish have accumulated along the coast and in rivers, according to the Athens News Agency.
It is the second environmental disaster to hit the port of Volos, located three and a half hours north of Athens, following devastating floods in the Thessaly region last year.
This flood refilled a nearby lake, which had been drained in 1962 to combat malaria, increasing it to three times its normal size.
“Following last autumn’s storms, Daniel and Elias, about 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of plains in Thessaly were flooded, and various freshwater fish were swept into the sea by the rivers,” said Dimitris Kloudatos, professor of agriculture and environment at the University of Thessaly.
Since then the lake’s water has rapidly receded, forcing freshwater fish to move to the port of Volos, which drains into the Pagasetic Gulf and the Aegean Sea, where they cannot survive.
On Tuesday alone, authorities removed 57 tonnes of dead fish that had washed up on beaches near Volos.
Most of the thousands of dead fish that lay dead due to flooding in the Pagasetic River have been removed, with two boats completing the process on Saturday, ARTnews channel reported.
Special nets have been installed at the mouth of the Ziriya River to intercept large amounts of dead fish.
According to the local restaurant and bar association, the number of tourists to the area has dropped by about 80 percent since last year’s floods.
“This dead fish situation will be a death knell for us,” said the association’s president, Stefanos Stefanou, earlier this week. “Who will come as a visitor to our city after this?”
Due to the environmental crisis an investigation has been launched by the public prosecutor.
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