By Anthony O. Miller
HEALTH Ministry officials yesterday queued up to pass the buck, as one after another either refused to say, was unavailable or otherwise avoided discussing how coli bacteria began polluting Kokkinotrimithia’s drinking water at least as far back as February.
A Water Development Department (WDD) source told the Cyprus Mailthat, some five months ago, sewage had seeped into the aquifer from which a private bore-hole pumped water, which in turn was connected to Kokkinotrimithia’s water supply.
One Public Health Service worker denied that sewage had contaminated the aquifer at all, but said instead that the village’s water had merely been found to contain unsatisfactory levels of nitrates.
He did not know the source of the alleged nitrate contamination, and was unable to say what danger to human health it posed. He also did not know whether the alleged nitrates had been cleaned from the water or what water source the village was now using.
At least a dozen phone calls later — to all the wrong Health Ministry referrals — and Sophocles Anthousis, director of the Public Health Service, showed up to field questions about Kokkinotrimithia’s water supply.
It was not nitrates, he said, but coli bacteria — and “not E-coli; that’s more serious” — that were found in the village’s drinking water in February.
Coliform bacteria, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “are evidence of recent human faecal contamination of water supplies.”
Health Ministry Epidemiologist Dr Laura Papantoniou said coli bacteria in water was “an indicator” the water was somehow tainted, “but if it’s increased, it can be serious.”
Dr Chrystala Hadjianastasiou, a Health Ministry Medical Officer, said one form of coli bacteria comes from plant decomposition, while most others occur in human and animal intestinal tracts. All are “pathogenic to human beings,” she said.
Faced with this, in mid-March, “we sent a letter to the (Nicosia) District Officer,” Andreas Papapolidou, telling him “to instruct the village authorities to disconnect” the tainted bore-hole, Anthousis said.
Months later, in May, tests of the village water supply — not the bore hole — showed it “satisfactory” for drinking, he said, adding that “maybe” increasing the water’s chlorine level, or “maybe” unhooking the tainted bore-hole had done the trick.
But Anthousis admitted he didn’t know what had got rid of the coli bacteria: whether extra chlorine had, in fact, been added to the water, or whether the tainted bore-hole had even been disconnected from the town’s water supply, as he had instructed Papapolidou to do in March.
“I’m not responsible” for ensuring the bore-hole was disconnected, Anthousis said. “Our responsibility is to monitor the water and to instruct the authorities to act accordingly”; it does not include ensuring that “the authorities comply with our suggestions,” he said.
“It is the responsibility of the village authority,” to comply with Health Ministry requests, he said. “I don’t know whose responsibility” it is to ensure that they comply, he added.
Nicosia District Officer Papapolidou had “just left” his office, his secretary said, when she told him the Cyprus Mailwas on the phone.
He was thus unavailable to say whether he ever told Kokkinotrimithia village authorities to disconnect the offending bore-hole from the town’s water supply — as Anthousis’ said his letter to Papapolidou directed — or whether he had ever checked to ensure it had been done by the village authorities.
Regardless, the villagers can now safely drink their local water, thanks to the intervention of someone doing something.
