By Martin Hellicar
DESPITE the strong objections of local residents, Zakaki is to get a mobile desalination plant, the cabinet decided yesterday.
The bold decision was taken during the cabinet’s first session under its new make-up following yesterday’s reshuffle.
In an effort to appease Zakaki residents, the cabinet decided that existing plans for the plant would be amended and measures would be taken to ensure there was no noise pollution from the plant.
The government sees desalination as the panacea for the island’s chronic water shortage problems.
But residents at both the proposed sites for mobile plants — Zakaki in Limassol and Ayios Thoedoros in the Larnaca District — have kicked up considerable fuss about the intrusion into their back yards.
These objections, and the arrival of winter rains last year, seemed to have convinced the government to “go slow” on plans to expand desalination, but yesterday’s decision on Zakaki signals the start of a fresh desalination push.
A static desalination plant is already operating at Dhekelia outside Larnaca, and the government has signed a contract for the construction of a similar plant near the Larnaca salt lake.
Greens claim desalination is costly and polluting and not a viable long- term answer to drought problems.
The Agriculture Ministry yesterday dismissed as “fantastical” Green party claims that they were “hiding” a dam in order to make the water situation look worse.
The greens said three million cubic metres of water behind Arminou dam never showed up in official water counts because the Ministry wanted to convince the public of the need for desalination. The Green party said the water behind the “hidden” Paphos area dam represented half the volume that the proposed Zakaki desalination plant would produce every year.
In an announcement yesterday, the Ministry confirmed that the Arminou water was not included in water reserve statistics, but said that this was because the dam had only been used since last winter. Because the purpose of the statistics was to provide figures for comparison with previous years, there was no point in including Arminou, the Ministry argument ran.
“In calculations of the reserves that exist to cover water supply needs… the quantity that can be made available from the Arminou dam is always taken into account,” the Ministry sated.
“There is therefore no ulterior motive to the non-inclusion of the Arminou dam water in the listing of reservoir reserves,” the statement added.
