No clear policy means water wasted

‘Much has been announced, little has been done’

By Tom Cleaver

Cyprus is “exceeding approved water withdrawal limits” when taking water out of reservoirs for use, a report released by the audit office on Tuesday said.

The report drew particular attention to the issue of excessive withdrawal of water from reservoirs linked to the southern conveyor and in the Paphos district, while also highlighting a number of other issues related to the island’s water supply.

It wrote that the management of Cyprus’ reservoirs is “fragmented”, with a “lack of interconnection between major water projects” undertaken by the agriculture ministry and the interior ministry.

This, the report said, “limits flexibility”.

It also pointed out that no measures have been taken to limit the evaporation of water from reservoirs, despite “successful” pilot applications for measures to reduce evaporation, including floating membranes.

In total, the report said, there are 108 dams in Cyprus, with a total capacity of 332 million cubic metres for water supply and irrigation.

The report also wrote about desalination units, of which five have been constructed in Cyprus to date, with a total capacity of 235,000 cubic metres per day.

However, with the desalination plant near the Paphos district village of Kouklia having burnt down in December, that capacity has been reduced, while the connection of the desalination plant at Vasiliko to the mains supply is still under construction.

As such, at present, the water is thus channelled into the southern conveyor system and requires re-treatment.

Desalinated water can during drought periods cover up to 81 per cent of Cyprus’ consumption, though the report points out that the fact that the plants’ operation requires fossil fuels it can increase energy costs. It also said there are “significant discrepancies” between the operating costs of the various units.

The report thus called for improvements in “efficiency” and for costs to be reduced, as well as the “rapid bringing into operation” of mobile desalination units.

It also touched on the matter of wastewater treatment, pointing out that while recycled water has been used in Cyprus’ water supply since 1998, only 52.3 per cent of the island’s recycled water capacity is utilised.

As such, the report says, “a large part of the recycled water remains unused or is discarded”.

The report’s publication comes days after coastal engineer Xenia Loizidou had slammed the government’s plan to import mobile desalination plants from the United Arab Emirates to solve Cyprus’ water shortage as an “incoherent panic solution”.

She said the units are “of course a solution”, but that “to really solve the water problem, the first thing which needs to be done is to invest in infrastructure and proper management of uses”.

This, she said, must entail there being “no lawns and golf courses” and an “adaptation” of crops to plant those which are less water intensive.

“The desalination units which will come … will altogether produce only 5.5 million cubic metres of water, and at a cost. I wonder why the 10 million cubic metres of treated water available from the wastewater treatment plant in Mia Milia is not an option, and why, for political or other reasons, what the bicommunal technical committee on the environment has been calling for years is not progressing,” she said.

On the matter of water security itself, she said the water development department had as early as 2008 prepared a study on Cyprus’ infrastructure, with the aim of preventing the island from being “dependent on weather conditions” for its water supply.

However, she said, “since then, much has been announced, little has been done”.

“If with two accidents, Mavrokolympos and Kouklia, the entire state planning collapses, then we are clearly a country which is defenceless and this water policy has failed over time,” she said, referring to the draining of the Mavrokolympos reservoir and a fire at a desalination plant in Kouklia.

Earlier, President Nikos Christodoulides had announced that desalination units would be brought to Cyprus from the UAE to ensure the island’s water supply, with government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis declaring that there will be “no risk” of there being any water cuts in Cyprus this summer as a result of the units’ forthcoming arrival.

Christodoulides had stressed that the units will be provided “free of charge”, a fact he said “underlines the importance of relations in the context of the country’s foreign policy, and in matters of internal policy”.

He said he had submitted a request to the UAE, and that the country’s President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan had personally decided that it be provided free of charge, “within the context of the excellent political relations we have”.