Nicosia water supply has doubled

By a Staff Reporter

WATER supply in Nicosia has almost doubled since the summer, but restrictions will remain in force until at least December, the Nicosia Water Board told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.

Recent rain has enabled the authority to relax summer-time restrictions, which only pumped water to homes three days a week. Technical manager, Panayiotis Theodorides, was reluctant to pin down specific hours of supply, which he said now varied slightly from day to day.

“But supply has almost doubled now, because lower temperatures have lowered demand,” he told the Cyprus Mail. The new Larnaca desalination unit is due to be completed by December 16, providing an extra 52,000 tonnes a day.

Although the director of Water Development Christos Markoulis has admitted that delays could push that date forward, Nicosia water restrictions are to be reviewed at the end of the year.

The Director of the Nicosia Water Board, Charalambos Palantzis, told the Cyprus Mail the cuts had every chance of being lifted in December. “The Nicosia water problem will then be solved,” he said.

He added that only if the torrential rains that swept across northern Europe this week moved down to Cyprus would there be a quicker end to the restrictions. Plans to build another desalination plant at Moni have been shelved because of escalating cost, in the hope that rains would be more forthcoming this winter.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.