By Anthony O. Miller
MOST OF Cyprus will run out of reservoir water by April 7 next year, at current dam levels and consumption rates.
There are 14.4 million cubic metres (14.4 billion litres) of water behind the dams to serve most of the population, Water Development Department (WDD) chief engineer Nicos Tsiourtis said yesterday.
Those dams stretch from Kouris to Lefkara and supply 60,000 cubic metres of water a day into the Southern Conveyor Project (SCP), the aqueduct serving Nicosia, Larnaca, Limassol and Famagusta.
These are the most important reservoirs because they serve the bulk of the island’s residential and tourist populations, Tsiortis said.
But at the current rate of use – 60,000 cubic metres per day — the water in those reservoirs will last a maximum of 240 days before running out.
So unless it rains the way it has not for most of the past decade, people will be able to walk across the island’s bone-dry Southern Conveyor dams on April 7, 2001.
And if government desalination plans due in place this December fail to materialise by then, the country would be totally dependent on the only other water the WDD now has to draw on — the 40,000 cubic metres the Dhekelia desalination plant turns out at maximum output daily, and the 20, 000 cubic metres of groundwater it pumps from bore-holes.
To put that in perspective, the maximum output of the Dhekelia plant, the island’s only current such facility, barely meets 90 per cent of the needs of water-rationed Nicosia, according to the WDD.
So if the planned Moni desalination ship is not operating by December, and construction of the Larnaca desalination plant is not finished by then, the island’s major towns will have a bit more than three months of dam water, the Dhekelia plant’s output and some borehole water to divide up among most of the island’s population.
The Paphos and Polis areas, however, will not have any such troubles, as the vast bulk of the island’s 37 million cubic metres of reservoir water – 61 per cent, or 22.6 million cubic metres of it — is stored behind dams in the Paphos area.
These dams are not connected to the Southern Conveyor Project, and WDD sources say there are no government plans to make any connection, as this would be both too costly and too late anyway to relieve areas dependent on the Southern Conveyor system.
So will we run out of water?
“No. Not unless we start throwing water away,” says Tsiortis. “We have enough water until the end of the year. That’s why we imposed no restrictions,” this year other than to cut supplies to local water boards to 90 per cent of last year’s levels.
“We made a plan for water use this year to ensure what we have lasted” until the Larnaca desalination plant comes on line in December, he said.
The Larnaca plant’s contract was amended, at extra cost to the state, to speed up construction to meet that deadline.
In Cyprus, he noted, “we try to survive until the next rainy season”. Reminded that the rains failed last year, he said: “We can accommodate all the tourists and people living here until the end of the year, even beyond. Sleep easy.”
“Don’t worry about water.” he said. “We’ll take care of you.”
But Weather Service Director Dr Cleanthis Philaniotis was not so sure: “We have already run out of water,” he said, noting this past decade has been “the driest 10-year period this century”.
“Up to now, the total rainfall starting last October, was 352mm, which was only 71 per cent of normal. This is a serious drought for Cyprus,” he said. The meteorological year runs from October 1 to the following September 30.
“It’s a long drought. It’s not a question of living memory; it’s a question of records. We have records for 120 years,” he said.
“Everyone is suffering from the shortage of water. As a member of the public, I say that my tap doesn’t run for most of the time. So we have run out of water. I judge it from that,” and not from any WDD assurances, he said.
