Greens back residents against desalination plant

GREENS yesterday sided with Zakaki residents in their fight to stop the siting of a desalination plant in their suburb.

The Federation of Environmental and Ecological Organisations issued a statement calling on the government to think again and not to build the plant on Ladies’ Mile beach.

Agriculture Minister Costas Themistocleous has made plain his determination to go ahead with the cabinet-approved unit, despite strong opposition from residents of the Limassol suburb.

The federation described Ladies’s Mile as possibly “the most significant” beach on the island, which “had to be protected at all costs.”

The desalination plant is to go up next to the new Limassol port, at the far northern end off the coastal stretch.

The federation said the plant would have a serious environmental impact. Themistocleous insists an environmental impact study has given the proposed plant a clean bill of health.

“We further call on the Minister to undertake a re-examination of the water problem and the ways it is being dealt with in both the short and long-term, ” the greens’ statement read.

Environmentalists argue that water conservation, particularly in agriculture, would be a better long-term policy than desalination, which is an energy-hungry, and therefore polluting, process.

Local residents are threatening to blockade roads to the plant site in protest.

Themistocleous says desalination is the way out of the island’s chronic water shortage and would end the need for water cuts.

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