The Water Crisis
Although some winter rains have fallen on the parched soil of our island, the water crisis persists. Despite a few good downpours which resulted in chaos and flooded streets in Nicosia and Larnaca recently, sadly the dams are still almost empty with an average of only about 3% storage. Some of the dams are absolutely bone dry and the needed rainfall flow into the dams is dismally low.
Limassol now relies entirely on water imported from Greece by tanker, with some delays and hitches in delivery recently bringing the supply nerve-wrackingly close to zero.
There is also a delay in the new Paphos desalination plant, as the tender award is being contested, which means the opening date originally planned will not be in April 2009. As for Peyia, which bears the scars of unscrupulous unsustainable development over the past decade, the Mayor is pinning his hopes for even more building on promises from the Minister of Agriculture for a desalination plant in Peyia too.
They’ll need one, as the once plentiful Peyia aquifer has suffered from over-extraction to feed the building frenzy. As a result, the Municipality has damaged its precious underground water resources and has already been forced to stop pumping from some boreholes due to saltwater intrusion. This means that Peyia can now meet its water needs only with outside help, especially so if the drought continues this winter.
Green Party Member and Peyia Councillor Linda Leblanc is worried that safeguards are still not in place in Cyprus, especially so in light of the fact that most people have not yet developed a water savings consciousness. She feels that desalination should be a last resort due to high cost, pollution, intrusion into protected coastal zones and lack of controls.
She asks, “Where will all these mobile desalination units be located – on the beach?”
Two hotels in Peyia were granted permits for mobile desalination units (the Coral Beach and Thalassa hotels owned by Leptos). Cyprus Environment Commissioner Charalambous Theopemptou has concerns, among other things, about who will monitor water quality and pollution and about exemptions from Environmental Impact Assessments for such mobile units producing up to 1,500 cubic meters per day.
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With people already feeling the pinch of the economic squeeze, one wonders how we will ever be able to afford expensive and polluting desalination units all over the place!
In the meantime, new applications for continued building are flowing in, although the rate has thankfully reduced. Unbelievable as it may seem, there are even new golf course proposals by big developers for several areas of the island, including two at Limni near Polis.
Perhaps the property market crash in Cyprus and the global economic crisis have a silver lining: a 40% drop (and falling) so far this year in property sales here surely will reduce some of our future water demands and the strain on the environment.
And none too soon in the opinion of many people who wonder how the crisis management that serves for governance in Cyprus is tolerated by the people of this island. We seem to stagger from crisis to crisis - tourism slump, property shambles, no title deeds, no water. What’s next??
Better keep praying ... |
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