Large sections of the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki have been without water for a fifth day because of damage to an old pipeline.

The center and north-western parts of Greece's second-largest city have been without water since Tuesday, when a 40-year-old pipeline that brings water to the city from 50 kilometres away burst.

Hundreds of thousands of people in the metropolitan area of 1.2 million, which includes the city's suburbs, have been affected.

Company officials said the damage has been repaired, but water service will resume only gradually, beginning with the city center, and many outlying suburbs will not have water for most of Sunday.

Earlier on Saturday, Thessaloniki Water Company chairman Yiannis Krestenitis said that while the damage had been repaired, the water coming through the pipeline was "unfit for consumption".

The company later said the water quality issues had been resolved.

Schools were forced to close, hospitals were affected and people flocked to public fountains to fill plastic bottles and containers with water.

[AP]</s>THESSALONIKI, Greece — Large sections of the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki have been without water for a fifth day because of damage to an old pipeline, prompting a judicial investigation into the city’s state-owned water company.

The centre and northwestern parts of Greece’s second-largest city have been without water since Tuesday, when a 40-year-old pipeline that brings water to the city from 50 kilometres (31 miles) away burst. Hundreds of thousands of people in the 1.2-million metropolitan area that includes the city’s suburbs have been affected.

Schools were forced to close, hospitals were affected and people flocked to public fountains to fill plastic bottles and containers with water.

A city prosecutor has opened an investigation into possible damage to public health as well into the city water company’s finances.</s>Norsk Hydro ASA (OTCMKTS: NHYDY) and Northwest Pipe (NASDAQ:NWPX) are both industrial products companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, earnings, profitability, dividends, risk, institutional ownership and analyst recommendations.

This table compares Norsk Hydro ASA and Northwest Pipe’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

Norsk Hydro ASA pays an annual dividend of $0.11 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.9%. Northwest Pipe does not pay a dividend. Norsk Hydro ASA pays out 22.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend.

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for Norsk Hydro ASA and Northwest Pipe, as provided by MarketBeat.

Northwest Pipe has a consensus target price of $9.00, indicating a potential downside of 48.54%. Given Northwest Pipe’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Northwest Pipe is more favorable than Norsk Hydro ASA.

This table compares Norsk Hydro ASA and Northwest Pipe’s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

Norsk Hydro ASA has higher revenue and earnings than Northwest Pipe. Northwest Pipe is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Norsk Hydro ASA, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

0.1% of Norsk Hydro ASA shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 84.6% of Northwest Pipe shares are held by institutional investors. 0.0% of Norsk Hydro ASA shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.0% of Northwest Pipe shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Norsk Hydro ASA has a beta of 0.97, meaning that its share price is 3% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Northwest Pipe has a beta of 1.12, meaning that its share price is 12% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Norsk Hydro ASA beats Northwest Pipe on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

Norsk Hydro ASA (Hydro) is an integrated aluminum company with operations in various activities along the aluminum industry’s value chain. The Company operates through six segments: Bauxite & Alumina, which includes bauxite mining activities, production of alumina and related commercial activities, primarily the sale of alumina; Primary Metal, which includes primary aluminum production and casting activities; Metal Markets, which include sales activities relating to products from the its primary metal plants and operational responsibility for Hydro’s stand-alone remelters, as well as physical and financial metal trading activities; Rolled Products, which include Hydro’s rolling mills; Energy, which includes energy sourcing for Hydro’s aluminum operations around the world, and Other and eliminations, which consists of its captive insurance company Industriforsikring, its industry parks, internal service providers, operation of Sapa and other activities.

Northwest Pipe Company is a manufacturer of engineered steel pipe water systems. The Company produces steel pipeline systems for use in drinking water infrastructure, and has approximately eight manufacturing facilities, located in Portland, Oregon; Denver, Colorado; Adelanto, California; Parkersburg, West Virginia; Saginaw, Texas; St. Louis, Missouri; Salt Lake City, Utah, and Monterrey, Mexico. The Company, through Water Transmission Group, produces engineered welded steel pipe products for use in water transmission applications. The Company’s solutions-based products are used in water transmission, plant piping, tunnels and river crossings applications.

Receive News & Ratings for Norsk Hydro ASA Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Norsk Hydro ASA and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.</s>By now, we’re all familiar with the idea of a carbon footprint — and the fact that Americans have the largest carbon footprints in the world. But what about water? The truth is that Americans are even more wanton water-users than they are carbon emitters. To wit: Did you know that every year, Americans use three times the water as the French, even though our per capita GDP’s are comparable? And it’s not because the French don’t bathe — the trend holds when you compare us to almost all developed countries.

All those facts are laid out in this brilliant interactive infographic (refreshingly built in an HTML5 version, as well) by Harvard School of Design Students Joseph Bergen and Nickie Huang, which is the grand prize winner of Visualizing.org and Circle of Blue‘s World Water Day Challenge, which asked people to create the most impactful infographic they could about the world’s water woes. (For their troubles, Bergen and Huang will get $5,000 from GE.). It does a superb job at showing exactly how water is used — and wasted — all across the world. The first section allows you to compare the water use between different countries. Here in the U.S. we use 4,382 liters of water a day (that’s a little more than 1,000 gallons). Even in other industrialized nations like the United Kingdom, they’re using a mere 539 liters a day per person. And that’s nothing compared to Uganda’s 28 liters a day per person.

Where Bergen and Huang’s graphic really excels is in how it explains embodied–or virtual–water. Every consumer good required some amount of water to produce and that’s how U.S. residents manage to rack up such high water footprints. A kilo of coffee beans took 21,000 liters of water to grow; a kilogram of beef required 60,000 liters. Drink some coffee or eat some beef, you’re inflating your own water footprint. Check out the interactive version here. [Read our feature on the business of the world’s water here.]</s>A Thessaloniki prosecutor has ordered a wide-ranging investigation into the reasons why the aging main water pipe supplying the city burst last Tuesday, leaving thousands of people without water for days.

 

 The regional governor of Central Macedonia, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, said on Monday that the situation was a “disgrace” and slammed government ministers for turning a blind eye to the problem.

 

 The water supply slowly began to resume at the weekend but the problem also triggered a war of words between the government and opposition parties.

 

 New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the government was “incompetent” for not pre-empting the damage to the main pipe and that it should have sacked Infrastructure Minister Christos Spirtzis and the leadership of Thessaloniki Water Supply and Sewerage Company (EYATH).

 

 The government responded that conservative governments over the decades had done nothing to maintain the 40-year-old pipe.
Water shortages caused by a burst pipe in Thessaloniki, Greece, enter a fifth day.