AN OFFICIAL at the Water Development Department yesterday admitted that chemical levels in the drinking water supplied to Makedonitissa were way above the allowed EU maximum, but insisted it posed no risk to human health.
The confirmation came after Olga Salangos, a civil engineer at the Dhekelia desalination plant, told the Cyprus Mail she had carried out her own tests on the drinking water at her home in Makedonitissa, near the Makarios Stadium in Nicosia, and found that it was not “suitable for consumption”.
But a civil engineer at the Water Development Department assured the paper that, although the water was indeed theoretically classed as “unsuitable and dangerous” for public consumption, this was not meant to be taken literally.
Salangos said she was not acting as an official for the desalination plant, but merely as a concerned citizen, who was being forced to drink unhealthy water since November 21, when she first carried out an analysis on the quality of her home’s drinking water at the Dhekelia plant’s laboratory.
“Last summer, we had some problems with our water quality,” she said yesterday, “but it was quickly remedied by the Nicosia Water Board. Nonetheless, I’ve carried out checks on it every now and again.”
On November 21, during one of her routine samples, Salangos found that the “quality of water was not good, and could not be called drinking water”. Thinking it to be the same problem as in the summer, she called the water board and was told to wait for an improvement.
Since then, she said she had conducted an average of 20 tests on her water and on that of five other neighbouring houses. All show the same results: excessive levels of chloride, sodium and total dissolved solids (TDS).
“I kept being told the Water Board would get back to me, and that the water quality would be improved – but nothing,” she said.
On Friday, Salangos conducted her final analysis before contacting the media. The results showed 347mg/l of sodium, 315mg/l of chloride and 1,200mg/l of TDS. The European Union stipulates that these levels should not exceed 200mg/l, 200mg/l and 500mg/l respectively, she said.
Salangos asked another civil engineer who specialises in water to analyse her sample in order to confirm her results.
“He could not believe that this water sample had been obtained from my own home supply,” she said, because the three parameters were so far out of range.
Although she could not say what adverse effects drinking the water had, she insisted that it had to be unhealthy.
But the civil engineer at the Water Development Department assured the Cyprus Mail that although the levels of sodium, chloride or TDS in the water sample were high, there was no scientific evidence to suggest that they were unhealthy. “All they do is give the water a strange taste,” he said.
“When we say it is unsuitable for consumption and dangerous, it does not mean that it poses a health risk,” he said. The civil engineer explained that it was classified in this way so that people would not drink it: not because of its side effects, but because of its bad taste.
“For instance drinking seawater is not dangerous, but is classified as so, because if you drink too much it will make you throw up due to the high salt concentration. However, it won’t kill you. In other words, this is what we mean by ‘dangerous and unsuitable’,” he said.
He added that the World Health Organisation (WHO) said “no health-based guidelines were proposed” for levels of sodium, chloride and TDS in drinking water.
But the WHO guidelines did add: “However, concentrations in excess of 200mg of sodium may give rise to unacceptable taste,” and a “chloride concentration of about 250mg can give rise to detectable taste”.
Makedonitissa’s drinking water was not unhealthy, he said, it just did not taste nice.
But this has not stopped Salangos from taking up the matter.
She said she spoke to the Water Board last Thursday and they never got back to her. Tired with being ignored time and time again, she decided to go public over the weekend. By yesterday, the Water Board were on the phone to her and set up a water sample analysis for today at 9am, she said.
Even the Mayor of Engomi was conducting an analysis of the water, she said, and would decide what measures to take once the results were back.
No one at the Engomi municipality or the Nicosia Water Board was available for comment yesterday.
Salangos said she suspected her home and those in the surrounding area were being supplied drinking water from wells.
“I was told we were getting water from the Larnaca desalination plant, but I cannot believe that, because I know how it operates and I am 99.99 per cent sure the water it produces is good,” she said.
“What I believe is that we are given water from wells, and so all they have to do is close them down.”
She added that, they had had a similar problem in the area in 1995, and that she had been part of a group that had put a stop to the water supply from wells, as it had proved unsuitable for consumption.
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.
