By Anthony O. Miller
A CITIZENS’ group calling itself the Struggle Committee of Ayios Theodoros yesterday accused Agriculture Minister Costas Themistocleous of “misleading the people” and the Council of Ministers over building ‘mobile’ desalination plants in Cyprus.
Charilaos Costa, a spokesman for the group, said yesterday Themistocleous was “hiding the truth” about the environmental impacts on the villages of Ayios Theodoros and Zakaki of the two ‘mobile’ desalination plants the government plans to site there.
Costa scoffed at the notion the two plants were ‘mobile’, declaring: “These plants are… as permanent as planting a tree.” They will not only be anchored in tons of concrete, he said, but “they will (each) burn 20 tons a day of diesel fuel.”
“They will pollute the atmosphere and they will be noisy,” he said. “The noise of these plants will be far higher than” the noise from the permanent Dhekelia Desalination Plant, he said.
But he wryly declared: “I promised the minister I would make them ‘mobile’, ” by suing the Cyprus government, either in Cyprus courts or European courts, to block or move them.
Costa, who said his committee represented 1,500 residents of the two villages, echoed concerns voiced last week to the House of Representatives by the mukhtars of Ayios Theodoros and Zakaki about the two ‘mobile’ plants to be sited near their villages.
The mukhtar of Zakaki was worried about noise from the diesel generators that will power the units. And he feared their heavy salt-brine discharge would harm coastal waters.
The mukhtar of Ayios Theodoros accused Themistocleous of installing the two units without proper planning, and urged they be installed further from inhabited areas.
House Environment Committee Chairman Demetris Iliades had sympathised with the mukhtars’ concerns last week, declaring the government should not solve one problem by creating another.
“It is understood that the noise created and the fumes put out (will) hurt the environment, and negatively affect the quality of life, because the units are (to be located) close to residential areas,” Iliades said.
Nicos Tsiourtis, Water Development Department (WDD) senior water engineer, said diesel generators were necessary, as there was no time to run high- tension electrical wires and pylons out to the sites proposed for the two desalination units.
Costa dismissed this, claiming the real reason was that the Dhekelia Desalination Plant and the second permanent unit planned for outside Larnaca would each draw off two per cent of the total electricity output of the Cyprus Electricity Authority (EAC), and ultimately the EAC cannot afford to power the two ‘mobile’ units, plus the two permanent ones.
Tsiourtis insisted the diesel generators would be “insulated and pre- packaged in containers, so we expect the noise levels to be very low – in the vicinity of 50 decibels.”
But Polyvios Eleftheriou, an engineering-noise lecturer with the Higher Technical Institute in Nicosia, said a normal conversation between two people in a room occurs at 60 to 70 decibels. He agreed it would be difficult to get diesel generators to run this quietly, especially at night.
Costa said the government had not “scientifically chosen the areas where the desalination plants will be with any concern for the environment.” Themistocleous admitted this before the House Environment Committee last week.
The Minister said there would be no environmental assessment reports done prior to installing the mobile desalination plants, because the units have to be installed quickly in the next few months to get the island through this summer.
But he said every possible precaution would otherwise be taken to minimise their damage to the environment.
The government first went to bid last September for tenders for the two mobile desalting units, but still has not yet picked their builder from the 73 tenders received. Tsiourtis said he expected the Tender Board to open the bids this week.
Without prior environmental assessments, and with the tender specifications requiring the two mobile units to be running within 22 weeks of the awarding of the winning bid(s), Tsiourtis said he expected the two mobile units to be on-line by June or July.
The WDD’s tender offer pledged to spend up to £330,000 to install one desalting unit at Ayios Theodoros near Larnaca to hook to the WDD’s pipeline to Nicosia, and up to £300,000 to install a second mobile unit at Lady’s Mile at Zakaki near Limassol, to hook up to Limassol’s water system.
At the time, it also said it would entertain bids for imported water at the same costs per cubic metre. Somehow, the thrust of the bidding process turned toward desalination, and away from importation.
Not long after, Costa noted, Greece offered Cyprus water free of charge, if the Republic paid the shipping cost. At the time, the government said it hoped some of Cyprus’ merchant fleet magnates would be generous in giving the government a break in the hauling costs. Then, he said, nothing more was said about Greece’s offer of free water.
“The government did not even seek quotes” on the cost of hauling the free Greek water, Costa said.
Costa accused Themistocleous of refusing to address his concerns, either in writing, or by telephone. He said he most recently tried to address his concerns to the minister this past Saturday in a telephone call to a radio talk show.
Discouraged, Costa said he was seeking legal counsel from George Colocassides, a Nicosia lawyer, who confirmed yesterday that “we are contemplating legal action” against the government regarding construction of the ‘mobile’ desalination units.
