About Evinos Dam

Evinos is the newest of the four major reservoirs supplying the Athens water system, located in Aetolia-Acarnania in western Greece along the Evinos River. Completed in 2001, the reservoir was built explicitly as a response to the prolonged water crises that gripped Athens during the 1990s, when an extended drought sequence exhausted conventional storage and forced emergency rationing. The arch dam is 125 metres tall and impounds 130 million cubic metres of water — a capacity more modest than Mornos or Yliki, but strategically important. Water from Evinos flows into the existing Mornos Reservoir via a 30-kilometre tunnel connection, functioning as a supplementary feed into the integrated Athens water network. The Evinos River catchment drains the western Aetolia mountains, a zone that receives significant winter precipitation and benefits from orographic lifting as Atlantic-origin storm systems encounter the rising terrain. The newer construction date of Evinos meant it benefited from modern dam engineering practices, sophisticated instrumentation systems, and automated monitoring capabilities that older Greek dams predate. Compared to the lengthy history of Mornos and the ancient roots of Yliki, Evinos is a contemporary addition to Greece's water infrastructure, yet it has proven its value during recent drought periods. The dam itself is a modern arch structure, a different design class from the earth-fill dams that dominate the system. The reservoir's mountainous setting and remote location mean it receives fewer visitors than Mornos or Yliki, but it remains a crucial element in the diversified strategy for meeting Athens's water demand. As climate projections point toward increasingly variable rainfall patterns across the eastern Mediterranean, the role of Evinos as a secondary source feeding the primary Mornos-Yliki system has become more strategically important.