Cyprus Mail wrote:Miscalculations in water planning spell disaster
By Anna Hassapi
THE coming month will be particularly challenging for water consumption as delays and miscalculations in water management, in combination with the drying up of dams, means that there is simply not enough water to supply Cyprus.
“We have two very difficult months before us and we must take necessary action to go through them as well as possible,” said Kyriakos Kyrou, Senior Officer of the Water Development Board.
Over the next three days, the situation has been made even worse due to a 50 per cent reduction in water production at the Larnaca and Dhekelia desalination plants.
WDB senior engineer Vlassis Partassides said the Larnaca plant’s operations had been shut down for three days to carry out upgrades and expansion works. In the meantime a small unit at the Dhekelia plant had also been temporarily put out of service for maintenance works.
Partassides said the water production loss in the next three days was more than half and would affect the entire island, except Paphos.
“It is very serious and we are losing sleep over it,” he said.
Thankfully further water cuts were unlikely because the Water Board had other water reserves it could tap into such as boreholes and the Kourris Dam, Partassides said.
“People have to try to economise even more over the next three days… Don’t wash pavements, roads and verandas. Over the next few days wasting water is a crime,” he said.
But the situation in Limassol is particularly dramatic as the Kourris Dam is fast drying up, the water from Greece is arriving in smaller quantities than initially planned and the water works for the Moni desalination plant and the Garyllis water treatment plant will be delayed.
Specifically, Kourris presently holds 700,000m³ of water, while only 300,000m³ of this can be used. The remaining water at the bottom of the dam cannot be reached as the necessary infrastructure is not there and no effort has been made to obtain it.
Arminou dam in the Paphos district holds an additional 300,000m³. Water from Arminou has in the past been sent to Kourris via underground channels, but it presently holds too little water for such an endeavour. In addition to Limassol, Kourris dam supplies water to Larnaca, Nicosia and Famagusta.
Meanwhile, Limassol residents have been suffering from unannounced and unpredictable water cuts as Limassol Water Board has been receiving less quantities of water from the main water authority. In the last week, residents of areas including Omonoia, Neapoli, Kapsalos, Ayios Spyridonas, Halkoutsa and Ayios Athanasios got more water cuts than is stated in the water cuts schedule.
The Moni disaster
IT WAS initially announced that the Moni desalination unit would start operating by June 2008, this date was then extended to October. The plant’s construction, however, has not been completed and authorities are now saying it will not be operational until November.
The temporary desalination plant is expected to operate for three years, with a pumping capacity of 20,000m² of desalinated water each day. It will sell the water produced to the Water Board for €1.38 per cubic meter. Given the delays in the operation of the Moni desalination unit, serious mismanagement questions have been raised including:
l Moni is a temporary unit and was presented as a ‘quick fix’ solution to the urgent problem. To do things quickly, the state did not follow legal procedure and did not carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment for this project
l Why is all this state money spent on a plant that will only be used temporarily, while there are plans for a permanent desalination unit at Episkopi?
l The project’s cost is raised if one considers that the Ministry of Agriculture, under the previous administration, had paid £1.5 million in compensating measures to Pyrgos community, which will house the desalination plant, to make up for any impact or land devaluation that may arise as a result of the desalination unit
Garyllis boreholes
AT THE beginning of the summer season, the Water Board announced that drilling boreholes at Garyllis River would give Limassol some extra water to make it through the summer. The Garyllis water, however, needed special treatment to make it suitable for consumption as it was high in nitrates. The treatment infrastructure has yet to be completed and is expected to finish in November.
Limassol Water Board had announced that drillings at Garyllis would have the capacity to pump a total of 8,000-10,000m³ of water per day. The Water Board at the time had said that this amount would cover Limassol’s water needs until the end of the summer.
The Greek water saga
AFTER some initial delay, the transportation of Greek water on land was accomplished. However, instead of 50,000m³ of water per day, as was provided in the contract, an average of 30,000m³ per day is being unloaded every day.
The reasons for the reduced quantity of water include the fact that the construction of a pumping station to transport water in areas of higher altitude in Limassol has not been completed yet, despite the fact that Ocean Tankers has a contractual obligation to do so. At present, Greek water is taken to Yermasoyia reservoir, which could not hold the 50,000m³ of water. Meanwhile, water cannot be taken to Kapsalos reservoir because of technical difficulties that would have been overcome if the pumping station was ready.
In addition, the process of unloading the water is taking longer than expected as there are delays in tying the tankers onto the anchorage. The reason for this is simple: if the ships arrive at night, visibility is low and no provision has been made to provide lighting so that staff can see what they are doing.
A final challenge lies in the fact that Greece has been sending less water every day than the amount agreed.
Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2008
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