The damaged Mavrokolympos reservoir in the Paphos district is expected to be emptied by Friday, the agriculture ministry said on Wednesday.

With the door to evacuating the reservoir opening on Thursday, approximately 1.3 million cubic metres of water will be released into the Mavrokolympos river from where it will flow into the sea, the ministry said.
The water will be released and the flow will be the same as it has been since Sunday when the leak was first detected, the ministry said.

Irrigation for the areas of Peyia and Kissonerga, for which Mavrokolympos served as the main water supply, will now be provided via interconnections originating from Asprogremou dam, also near Paphos.

“The state is doing everything humanely possible to continue to provide uninterrupted water supply and actively support farmers,” Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou said, announcing that the agriculture ministry would provide reimbursement for farmers with proven loss of income due to water scarcity.

Responding to concerns about water scarcity in the summer, Panayiotou assured that the relevant steps were being taken to ensure sufficient infrastructure, adding the aim was to “provide 100 per cent water supply”.

However, she added that external threats could not be fully eliminated referring to the incident of the desalination plant that burnt down in the Paphos in December.

Asked about the estimated duration of the repairs to the dam wall by the Cyprus Mail, the ministry stated that precise information on the matter could not be provided yet. Once the reservoir is emptied, relevant inspections will be carried out and, on this basis, a comprehensive programme for the repairs will be drawn up.

As of now, a failure of the dam’s discharge tunnel vent is believed to have caused the leak which was discovered on the weekend. Previous attempts to fix the pipes had failed.

Authorities set up road closures as a safety measure immediately. However, the incident has set off security concerns regarding the inspection of the dams’ pipes which were installed in 1966.

Visiting the Mavrokolympos reservoir on Monday, Panayiotou emphasised that protecting human life was the authorities’ primary concern while simultaneously attempting to limit water loss. She elaborated that water conservation was a critical task pointing to droughts expected in the summer months.

Cyprus relies heavily on its 108 dams and reservoirs as a primary source of water for irrigation use. The Mavrokolympos reservoir was built for the irrigation of banana plantations in the area. It has a capacity of 2.18 million cubic metres and consists of the Mavrokolympos river and an artificial lake.