NEA SILATA, Greece (AP) — Six weeks before the harvest, no water left in the soil for farmer Dimitris Papadakis’ olive grove in northern Greece, so he has started a new morning routine.

He and his teenage son drive a truck to collect water from nearby areas, using a small generator to connect the vehicle to irrigation pipes to save what’s left of his thirsty crops.

“Our boreholes have almost dried up… Now we rely on tankers to irrigate our fields,” says Papadakis, who runs an agricultural cooperative in a village in Chalkidiki, a three-fingered peninsula in northern Greece that is popular with tourists.

This summer, southern Europe has been hit by several heatwaves, following up to three years of below-average rainfall. Drought areas have spread across the region’s map. In Greece, the consequences are water shortages, dried-up lakes and even the death of wild horses.

The groundwater beneath Papadakis’ 270 olive trees is running low and becoming brackish. The drought is expected to halve the expected harvest.

The water crisis was exacerbated by the booming tourism season.

In Kassandra, the westernmost finger of the peninsula, the population increases from 17,000 (year-round) to 650,000 in summer, resulting in unbearable pressure on water reserves.

“After three consecutive winters with almost no rainfall, we have seen a 30 to 40 percent decline in water supplies,” says Mayor Anastasia Halkia.

Haroula Psaropoulou, who owns a house in the coastal village of Nea Potidea, says it is difficult to cope with the frequent water outages in households, which can last up to five days in the scorching heat.

“I reuse the water from the sink and from washing and take care of the plants,” says 60-year-old Psaropoulou. “I have even fetched water from the sea for the toilet.”

According to the European Union’s civil protection service, acute drought conditions currently prevail around the Black Sea and as far west as northern Greece.

Along the Evros River, which separates Greece and Turkey, a severe drought has resulted in the delta now having higher sea levels. The extra salt is killing the wild horses that depend on the river for drinking water.

“If the horses don’t get water for a week, they die,” says Nikos Mousounakis, who heads an initiative to create drinking water points for the horses. “Some of them are still in bad condition, but we hope that with further help they will recover.”

Until recently, Lake Picrolimni in northern Greece was a popular destination for mud baths, but this summer it is a shallow pool of cracked earth, dry enough to support the weight of a car.

“It hasn’t rained for two years, so the lake has dried up completely,” says community leader Costas Partsis. “It used to have a lot of water. People would come and bathe in the muddy water. The clay has a therapeutic effect on many ailments. This year, no one came.”

Nearby, Lake Doirani stretches along Greece’s northern border with North Macedonia. Its shoreline has retreated by 300 meters in recent years. Local officials are calling for public works to restore the river’s water supply, joining calls from experts who argue that major changes in water management are needed to mitigate the damaging effects of climate change.

“We have been experiencing a prolonged drought for about three years, due to reduced rainfall and snowfall, the climate crisis and poor water management,” says Konstantinos S. Voudouris, professor of hydrogeology at the University of Thessaloniki. “The solution lies in three key words: conservation, storage and reuse.”

Voudouris argues that outdated water networks lose too much water and that infrastructure improvements need to focus on collecting and storing rainwater during the rainy season and reusing treated wastewater for agriculture.

“These drought phenomena will return with greater intensity in the future,” Voudouris said. “We must take action and plan ahead to minimize their impacts … and we must adapt to this new reality.” ___ Follow AP’s coverage at: https://apnews.com/climate-and-environment