Water emergency tied up in red tape

By Anthony O. Miller

MOTHER Nature has mercifully belied the most pessimistic prognostications of Agriculture Minister Costas Themistocleos: that the island’s reservoirs would dry up if the winter rains failed again this year as they did last.

But government red-tape is still giving the lie to the ’emergency’ nature of the government’s ‘crash programme’ to have two mobile water desalination plants on-line by June, and a second, permanent plant operating by the year 2000.

So far, according to the Meteorological Service, except for October when it did not rain at all, rainfall has been above average island-wide.

The reservoirs are now 9.7 per cent full (or 90.3 per cent empty), with 26.2 million cubic metres of water behind their dams, Dr George Socratous of the Water Development Department (WDD) said yesterday.

This compares with last November 17 when they were only 5.4 per cent full, and held only 14.2 million cubic metres (14 billion litres) of water.

But both figures still compare unfavourably with the 31.2 million cubic metres of January 11 last year when the reservoirs were 11.6 per cent full. And even with that much water in storage back then, the strict water rationing of a year ago is still in force.

Acting WDD director Christos Marcoullis said yesterday that even though current levels are some 15 per cent below this time last year, he was confident the island could get through the summer even if the two ’emergency’ desalination plants are not built.

But he was quick to add that the current rainfall “does not affect the construction of the desalination plants, as far as I know”.

(In 1993, the government shelved plans to build desalination plants after one winter’s rains broke the back of what, at the time, seemed a bad two- year drought. Cyprus is now entering its fourth year of its worst drought this century.)

Marcoullis said the tenders for the two mobile plants, and the permanent facility planned for outside Larnaca, are all in the “main tender board. There is no delay,” he insisted; the plans merely require further examination.

The government first sought tenders for the permanent desalination plant in November 1997 – 14 months ago – and still has not picked a builder. It also went to bid last September for the two mobile plants, but and has not picked contracts.

Marcoullis said the specifications require the first water to start pouring from the two mobile plants 22 weeks after the builder is selected.

Officials have said the island’s second permanent desalination plant should be operating by next year, but sources close to the bidding process have told the Cyprus Mail that bureaucratic delays will probably keep the permanent plant from producing water before the year 2001.

Cyprus gets some 80 per cent of its water from aquifers, all of which are dangerously over-pumped, some of which are bone dry, and others which are now too salty from seawater intrusion.

The Dhekelia desalination plant’s current maximum output is 40,000 cubic metres of water per day – about the daily needs of Nicosia. The balance of the island’s water needs comes from the dams.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.