In August 2017, Water. Desalination + reuse (Faversham House) reported, citing the newspaper Kathimerini, that Greece's General Secretariat for the Aegean and Island Policy and the Greek shipping sector had signed a contract worth €870,000 (about US$1 million) for a seawater desalination plant on Kastellorizo. Work was due to start in 2017. The remote Dodecanese island in the south-eastern Aegean had about 500 inhabitants and until then depended on water delivered by ship.
The report showed remote Greek islands seeking to replace water deliveries by ship with their own desalination, in this case funded jointly by the state and the shipping sector.