Water cuts to resume after Christmas wastage

PRE-CHRISTMAS water cuts are due to return today following heavy consumption during the Christmas period.
Agriculture Minister Michalis Polynikis said yesterday: “We will be in a position to re-evaluate the situation in one to two months. By this time we usually have a good idea of how large our reserves are.”
Polynikis plans to meet with Ministry of Agriculture and Water Development Department colleagues today to tackle the issue, and while local councils are largely in favour of lifting the restrictions, the Minister is expected to take a more cautious approach and keep the restrictions in place.
He said: “On one hand, the weather has been unusual for this time of year and we cannot predict how it will be in the coming days. On the other, during the Christmas period when restrictions were lifted, we had a waste of water by consumers.”
In December, water use in all areas increased by an average of 10 per cent, with increases of up to 20 per cent in Nicosia, compared with the same period in 2007 when water restrictions were last lifted.
The government was initially considering suspending all cuts and other restrictions in February this year given the amount of rainfall over the past three months. 
However the figures appear to show that when people perceive that there is lots of water, they don’t feel the need to economise.
Polynikis explained that taking into account the unexpectedly high water use over the Christmas period and unpredictable rainfall, he could not guarantee he will lift restrictions. The water development board were unable to comment on the issue yesterday.
“Even though we have been doing well recently, the current water levels are not sufficient to allow (unrestricted) use. We understand that councils are in favour of lifting restrictions but we do not want a return to 2008 levels.”
As of yesterday, water supplies were at around one third, (96.7 million cubic metres) of the total capacity of 290 million cubic metres.
Between August 2009 and the end of November, an average of 1.17 million cubic metres of water flowed into the reservoirs per month. This is over treble the amount recorded for the same period in 2007 and 2008.

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