By Anthony O. Miller
PARLIAMENT’S refusal to fund a desalination plant in Zakaki is cramping government efforts to bring water to the drought-stricken island, Agriculture Minister Costas Themistocleous said yesterday, warning the people of Limassol would suffer for it.
“Parliament is not helping the government solve the crucial water problem,” he said in the wake of Thursday’s vote, and “that means the people of Limassol will suffer more if we don’t have the (Zakaki) desalination plant ready in time.”
Themistocleous told the Cyprus Mail he would brief the cabinet in the coming days, and it would discuss how we to proceed.
The vote denied the Water Development Department (WDD) the funds to run power poles to the planned site of the de-salting plant, and to run a pipeline from the site to the Limassol water authority pipelines, Themistocleous said.
The 21-18 vote against the funding came as the WDD is weighing seven tenders to build the plant, WDD Senior Water Engineer Nicos Tsiourtis said, adding “the price is very right” with the lowest-bidder offering 33.6 cents per cubic metre of de-salted water.
This compares with 54 cents per cubic metre (1,000 litres) of de-salted water the government pays to the operators of the Dhekelia desalination plant, the island’s sole seawater de-salting facility. It produces up to 40 million litres per day.
Akel and Edek were joined by Disy deputy Stelios Stylianou and Diko Deputy Marios Matsakis in defeating the Zakaki funding in Thursday’s vote. Matsakis won special Diko approval to break party ranks and vote with his conscience.
Tsiourtis said the funding defeat surprised him because Disy, Diko and the United Democrats together had a majority in the House, but “not enough members were there” from the three parties when the vote went down.
Tsiourtis warned that if the rains continued to fail, and the Zakaki veto stood, “we are going to have more restrictions” on water use and they “will be prolonged” for as much as the two years it could take to find another site and build a plant.
Tsiourtis, echoing Themistocleous, said Limassol residents would suffer the most from delays in erecting a desalination plant in their area.
Matsakis denounced this as “a trick by the government.” He said Themistocleous “will be using the water restrictions as a blackmailing tactic because it has been proven beyond any doubt that applying water restrictions does not in any way save water.”
“People just have bigger tanks and they store the water during the time the water is not restricted,” Matsakis said.
He said the real restrictions were needed in farming, where he said water was wasted growing surpluses of water-intensive crops, “which we then destroy… We not only use the water to grow them, and then throw them away, we pay the growers,” he said, a practice he termed “illogical.”
Matsakis said he got Diko permission to break part ranks because “I strongly believe that it is the wrong decision to place the desalination plant in the location where the government wants to place it.”
He proposed two alternative sites. One near the Vassiliko Power Plant, where there is already extensive industrial work being carried out, the other area close to the peak of the Akrotiri Peninsula, in Episkopi Bay, within SBA territory, but far from any built up area.
Akel Deputy Andreas Christou and Edek’s Doros Theodorou said they voted against the Zakaki site because it was too close to beaches where thousands of tourists and Limassol residents swam in the summer, and because of faulty environmental site studies.
“We propose the same plant at another place,” Christou said. “There are other areas more removed from beaches, or already polluted with other industrial installations, where this plant can be located. This can be identified with the proper study.”
Theodorou blamed the government for failing to do a thorough environmental study of the area before deciding on the Zakaki site.
“They didn’t study. They decided (on Zakaki) just like that,” he charged.
The Zakaki site sparked popular opposition from the moment it was announced. Residents of Ayios Theodoros similarly baulked at government plans to site a desalination plant in their village.
Theodorou said he learned they abandoned the Ayios Theodoros plan “only because someone big interests intervened” he said.
“And I wonder,” he said: “is the interest of an individual more important than the interests of the whole population of Limassol, who use that area to swim in the summer?”
Edek’s former defence minister Yiannakis Omirou called on the government to carry out a thorough environmental study before building the plant.
“We want a credible study on which we can take a decision. We cannot pick areas. They have to prepare several studies for the environmental consequences. That’s the key,” he said.
