AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
How often do you think about the Roman Empire when trying to solve modern-day problems? In Athens, the reservoirs that supply water to the city are at historic lows due to drought, heat waves and wildfires. So Athens is looking to its ancient past for help - an aqueduct built by the Romans 2,000 years ago. Giorgos Sachinis is the director of strategy and innovation at Athens Water Supply and Sewage Company. Welcome to the program.
GIORGOS SACHINIS: Thank you, and thank yous a lot for having me.
RASCOE: This aqueduct has a name - Hadrian's Aqueduct, for the Roman emperor. It's 15 miles long, crosses, like, the whole span of Athens. How does it work?
SACHINIS: It's an underground channel. The way it operates, it infiltrates water from the groundwater table into this channel. So one must think of it not as a way of transporting water but as a way of collecting water. It lets water seep in and then, through a mild slope, it takes the water to the center, where was providing water to the rich neighborhood back then. But now the whole purpose is to get this water out of the Hadrian's Aqueduct before it reaches the ending reservoir because it will not have the standards of potable water. So we need to find the nonpotable uses like urban irrigation, washing of the streets, fire protection, industrial uses - these sorts of thing.
RASCOE: What's the process of getting it out before it reaches that reservoir, kind of connecting this aqueduct to the 21st century?
SACHINIS: Yeah. So we were very lucky because when it was built, it had around 400 wells along its route. They were digging from one well. They were digging from another well. And they were meeting in the middle underneath the Earth. So we are utilizing 20 of them as the starting point of a local, contemporary network - water network - that will be providing this water to the immediate neighborhood.
RASCOE: When will that happen?
SACHINIS: Hopefully, before the end of July. Perhaps in August, we will open the first local network. And the project will end by 2029, or 2028 earliest.
RASCOE: How does it feel to connect with your city's ancient past to solve this modern problem?
SACHINIS: I feel that we have a responsibility to utilize such a present that was given to us from the Roman times in order to build a new culture around water that speaks about sustainability, speaks about natural-based processes. It is such an elegant, resilient piece of water heritage. Of course, the next step is to utilize sewerage - wastewater. But as you can probably imagine, it is much easier to create a community of interested users around Hadrian's Aqueduct than around sewerage networks.
(LAUGHTER)
RASCOE: That's Giorgos Sachinis of Athens Water Supply and Sewage Company. Thank you so much for joining us.
SACHINIS: Thank you.
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