Water failures will cost Cyprus millions

THE GOVERNMENT’S plans to build a floating desalination plant instead of a fixed plant will cost the taxpayer millions of euros, presidential candidate Costas Themistocleous said.

Themistocleous, who was Agriculture Minister under former DISY president Glafcos Clerides, was speaking to reporters in Larnaca following a visit to the town’s fixed desalination plant located near the airport.

The island currently has two desalination units in the Larnaca district. Plans to build a third plant were shelved by the Papadopoulos government. The past several years’ drought has prompted the government to look for a quick fix to meet the island’s urgent water needs.

Themistocleous said the Larnaca plants covered the water needs of the Nicosia, Larnaca and Famagusta districts fully.

However, he said Cypriot taxpayers would be burdened with millions more euros “because the government didn’t act to ensure fixed desalination units and went for a mobile unit, which has a difference in cost of 30 cents per cubic metre of water from the fixed unit”.

He said the government was still in “a state of nirvana” and had undertaken no water projects in the past several years, leading Cyprus to the verge of water cuts.

He said the two units, in Larnaca and Dekelia, literally “save us” as their operation had saved the island from water rationing.

Asked about importing water from Greece, Themistocleous said the issue had been discussed and discarded in 1998 due to cost. He said it had been decided that the expense of importing water was far greater than producing water locally through desalination.

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