Mazotos residents will demand the complete scrapping of plans for a desalination plant in the area during a meeting with Agriculture Minister Christos Senekis on Wednesday.

The Mazotos community council and the “Save the Coast” initiative group met Senekis at noon to reiterate their opposition to the project.

The group, which has around 350 members, pointed out that the government had cancelled plans for a mobile desalination unit in Ayia Napa following opposition from hotels.

In Mazotos, it said, residents were seeking to protect the natural environment and coastline, but their concerns had not been taken into account.

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“We are not being taken into account, as if we are third-category citizens,” the group said.

Mazotos, it added, was a village with considerable natural wealth “and we will defend it to the end”.

The group said the desalination project had never been put to public consultation and that the views of residents and scientists had been ignored.

Opposition to the project dates back to earlier this year, when residents held a protest in January against plans for a desalination plant in the area.

At the time, Mazotos community leader Georgios Demetriou Paphitis said he had obtained an independent study recommending against locating a desalination plant in the area because of its protected habitats.

The community council called for the decision to be revoked or suspended and demanded a comprehensive independent environmental impact assessment, an examination of alternative solutions and locations, and assurances that national and European procedures would be followed.

It also called for the protection of habitats including Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadows.

Paphitis acknowledged Cyprus’ severe water shortage but criticised what he described as the government’s “hasty and arbitrary decisions” over the project.

The latest statement reiterated those concerns, warning that the impact of disturbing the already weathered coastal slope on the stability of the wider area had not been assessed.

“The devastating impact that disturbing the already weathered coastal slope will have on the stability of the slope of the broader region has not been assessed,” the group said.

It also argued that the proposed facility was not a mobile desalination unit but a “heavy industrial installation” that could bring about irreversible consequences for both land and sea.

While acknowledging Cyprus’ pressing water shortage, the group said constructing such a desalination plant on Mazotos’ “unspoiled coast” was “out of the question”.

Furthermore, the plant “contradicts the government’s proclamations about climate neutrality”, the group added.