Water conservation, what’s that?

Sir,

Congratulations on the content of last Saturday’s editorial (‘How one man put the whole state to shame’), particularly the final sentence.  As an Australian, I am “shocked and stunned” (to quote our beloved Dame Edna!), at the Cypriot Government’s ‘finger in the dyke’ policies regarding water resources.

In the five years since first visiting this beautiful island I have been unaware of any initiative by the authorities regarding large-scale reforestation, public education on water conservation, use of native plants, guttering, water butts or grey-water recycling.

It saddens me that even now my well-educated neighbour is using copious quantities of water to wash her patio and refresh her beautiful ‘European-style’ lawned garden.  She is not using water that has been saved from the shower, or washing up, it is fresh water, straight from the hose! Our local council has the sprinklers on in the heat of the day on several of the grassed roundabouts and even outside the local museum!

In Australia, where we’ve been in drought for the last seven years, we are allowed to use sprinklers for ten minutes between 6pm and 6am, twice a week on an odd/even house number basis.  Use of hoses has long since been banned and woe betide anyone who would dare to flout these and other laws relating to water conservation!  And privately-owned bores are subject to the same restrictions as mains water.

In Cyprus, as elsewhere, desalination plants can never be the full answer because they are extremely expensive to run: does anyone here wonder where the required power is going to come from and how much it will cost?

When the Cyprus landscape becomes totally barren, resulting in food having to be imported and tourists preferring to holiday in other prettier, shady, treed places and when the cost of providing water becomes prohibitively expensive then maybe the government will acknowledge its lack of forethought and planning.

Unfortunately, Cyprus, there is a long, hard road ahead to restore this country to its former beauty.

A ‘Concerned Aussie’