Gracefully rising above a din of croaking frogs because the solar units, a pelican flies over Lake Karla, one the biggest inland expanses of water in Greece.
Drained in 1962 to fight malaria and restored once more from valley to wetlands in 2018 to treatment drought, the lake is now triple its regular measurement after lethal floods final yr.
Tips on how to cope with the aftermath of the catastrophe has morphed right into a debate about the way forward for farming within the Thessaly area as an entire.
The farmers round Karla, many the descendants of lake individuals who had transitioned to land solely two generations earlier, noticed their holdings and flocks decimated by final yr’s floods.
In September, Storm Daniel, a Mediterranean cyclone of unprecedented depth, unleashed months’ price of rain in simply hours on Thessaly, Greece’s most fertile plain.
The deluge, which killed 17 folks, destroyed roads and bridges and drowned tens of hundreds of cattle.
Daniel, which arrived on the heels of a serious wildfire wave, was adopted simply weeks later by Storm Elias. Mixed, they triggered what Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis later referred to as “the worst floods” in Greek historical past.
The lakeside village of Sotirio, as soon as bordered by fields of corn and cotton, now lies on the fringe of a swamp. Darkish inexperienced water buzzing with bugs covers the fields. Even the place the flood has receded, solely silt and withered stems stay.
Angelos Yamalis, a third-generation farmer, mentioned his household misplaced 50 hectares (120 acres) of cotton, 30 hectares of wheat and 15 hectares of pistachio timber.
“It was a whole catastrophe … Even after the water recedes, we don’t know if the fields can be productive,” mentioned the 25-year-old.
“We based mostly our complete future on this space, on these crops,” Yamalis mentioned, including that new timber would want at the least seven years to bear fruit.
Officers haven’t supplied a timeframe for restoration and there are conflicting views on how one can transfer ahead. The authorities in Thessaly favour digging a big canal that may let the water drain into the Aegean Sea.
However a Dutch water administration firm advising the Greek authorities advocates a unique strategy, aimed not simply at stemming floods but additionally at stopping future drought.
The agency, HVA Worldwide, suggests constructing dozens of small dams that may include rainwater within the mountains.
Thessaly additionally must rethink its reliance on cotton, mentioned Miltiadis Gkouzouris, CEO of the Amsterdam-based agency. The area wants to maneuver away from cotton manufacturing whereas there’s nonetheless time to preserve what stays of its underground water reserves, he mentioned.
Greece is the European Union’s principal cotton grower, with 80 p.c of manufacturing. Though cotton represents lower than 0.2 p.c of the worth of European agricultural manufacturing, it has “sturdy regional significance”, the EU says.
Gkouzouris countered that cotton cultivation “by itself just isn’t worthwhile and all people is aware of that”.
“We calculate that if that continues with the rhythm that we’ve as we speak, inside 15 years we’re going to have a non-reversible state of affairs,” he mentioned.
Thessaly’s Governor Dimitris Kouretas is towards ditching cotton, nonetheless a profitable business for residents.
Kouretas, a Harvard College-educated biochemistry professor who was elected governor in October, has argued that cotton brings 210 million euros ($227m) in income to fifteen,000 households in Thessaly and is a key export for Greece. An extra 65 million euros is available in EU subsidies.