Hveragerði Runs Out Of Hot Water

Would-be swimmers who sought to take a dip in one of Hveragerði’s pools were met with an unpleasant surprise this morning, when the water turned out to be cold due to a shortage of hot water in the town.

The South Iceland village of Hveragerði is known for many things, but its most prominent feature is quite possibly the preponderance of naturally occurring hot springs all over the place. As Vísir reports, this makes the prospect of the town being short on hot water quite unusual.

However, there is a perfectly understandable explanation. Hveragerði might be surrounded by hot springs, but the village gets its hot water from two geothermal boreholes in the area. The water pressure in these boreholes has been decidedly low in recent days, depleting the hot water supply to the town considerably.

That said, the two holes are not used simultaneously – usually, one handles the summer months and the other handles the winter months. Both boreholes will soon be used to supply hot water to the village, with the addition of two more boreholes located a little further away being connected to the system.

As such, municipal and national employees are working hard to bring the situation under control.