By Anthony O. Miller
THE NICOSIA Water Board yesterday dismissed news reports claiming that polluted ground water is entering Nicosia’s water supply via borehole pumps being linked to drinking water pipes.
The board’s Technical Manager Panayiotis Theodoulides also shot down claims in Simerininewspaper that water condensed by air-conditioning units was also, somehow, being injected into Nicosia’s water supply.
“The reporter spoke about some theoretical possibilities of water contamination of the water supply (from these two possible sources), but he presented them in such a way as if this was happening right now,” Theodoulides told the Cyprus Mail.”But that is not the case.”
“It is true that the restriction of supply (during rationing) increases the chances of accidental contamination of the water supply,” Theodoulides conceded.
But each water meter has a “non-return valve that prevents contamination – a check-valve (that ensures) one-way flow” of drinking water into homes and offices, he said.
If a householder connects a borehole pump to a home water pipe between the meter and the tap, the meter’s check-valve would keep the tainted groundwater from flowing back into the mains supply, he explained.
Contamination would more readily occur where a householder attached a borehole pump in front of the water meter, between the meter and the street main. In such a case, any bacteria from underground water would have unrestricted freedom to either flow back or enter the municipal water supply, he said.
But since attaching a borehole line in front of the water meter would only increase a person’s water bill, charging them for the underground water that – however contaminated – is free, the likelihood of this as a source of contamination is reduced by the very scheming involved in the borehole hook-up.
“That’s why there is a residual of chlorine” in the water of .5 parts per million during water rationing, he said. “This is how the situation is,” he said. “The water is safe.”
But he said the increased chances of contamination due to reduced flow and pressure during drought-necessitated rationing “is one more reason for the government to implement its programme (of desalination plants) to have a full supply.”
As for air-conditioning water entering Nicosia’s water supply, Theodoulides said the only way that could happen would be for someone to deliberately inject air-conditioner run-off into the city’s water system before the water meter’s check-valve.
He conceded that introducing air-conditioner run-off into the city’s water supply might “theoretically” increase the risk of Legionnaire’s Disease, a sometimes fatal ailment associated with water used to cool huge air- conditioning systems in hotels or office buildings. But he dismissed the suggestion as remote and “theoretical” at best.
Theodoulides said it would also be very unlikely for polluted ground water, by itself, to seep through leaking underground water pipe connections into the city’s water supply.
He said he was unaware of any reports of anyone having connected a borehole to a domestic water supply in such a way as to contaminate the drinking water supply of Nicosia, as suggested in the Simerinistory.
Besides, he added, municipal water meter readers are instructed to look out for, when they make their six times yearly rounds, any strange connections on either side of the water meter, ensuring against illegal borehole hook- ups.
