Cyprus-Forum.com

[devil]

If you have a look at the weather we are enjoying at http://www.cypenv.org/weather/wx.htm , you will see that we are receiving no rain in this "wet season". By going to the Log page, you'll see that under today's entry (in blue), that if the weather does not break soon, we shall not have enough water for our 2006 needs.

I'm not saying that we need to go to Kykkos to start praying to St Luke's icon of the BVM, but things could become critical. I saw the Yermasiyou (sp?) dam was empty when I passed it, the other day.

[Sotos]

This is why our government spent all that money to build factories to process sea water. After those factories were build we had lots of rain during winters and they were not really needed. Maybe we will need them next year! Personally I prefer sunny weather

[devil]

Yes, but they stupidly stopped the desalination programme when the first drop of rain fell. Do you know how much water you would get if you had to rely on existing plants for your water, by the time that agriculture took its share? About 20 l/person/day. The WHO have a recommendation that each person should have a minimum of 100 l of clean water/day. If the Government had completed its programme, as originally foreseen, we would have been almost independent of the weather by having a network of potable water and a network of non-potable water for agriculture, both from desalination. Malta, Israel and many other Med coutries are much more advanced than we are in desalination for potable and non-potable water to complement the natural resources.

Take a good look at http://www.protonique.com/cyprus_water/ which was written in the drought period of the late 90s. You will see that much of Cyprus' water resources are simply wasted.

[Christo]

devil,
I don't know where you are from, at a guess the U.K.

But a water shortage in Cyprus should not come as a surprise to you. In a country that reaches the temperatures it does, and the large agricultural community we have.

What I don't understand is that haveing lived in the U.K. most of my life, the ammount of rain I have seen would keep Cyprus in water till the year....I don't no when!! YET they still have a water shortage every bloody year!!

Chris

[devil]

I suppose, if you go back to the beginning of the 1960s, I'm from the UK, but I've lived most of my life outside the UK (actually about 44 of my 73 years, including the last 42 consecutive years). Not that it is relevant to this thread!

Temperature does, of course, have an influence but sane water management is much more important and this is totally insane in this country, to the extent of being anarchic. Many countries with temperatures just as high or higher AND lower rainfalls than Cyprus are managing their water resources better than here.

And why does the UK have water shortages? Because they, too, have insane water management with inadequate planning of requirements if it should happen that they are taken by surprise by no rain falling for a whole week.

Please read the link I gave in my earlier post.

[Christo]

devil,
I agree it wasn't relevant where you come from, its just that in your profile there isn't any information.

To me it was relevant, because these last 10years say, in the U.K. there is always a water shortage, and thought that you would relate to it more if you came from there. No insult intended.

I read the link and it has answered a lot of questions for me, so thank you for that.

Chris

[Sotos]

I think it will start raining sooner or later and even if it rains less than precious years those desalination plants that we have will be enough as a backup ... i hope

[devil]

I see in today's Cyprus Weekly that the government is asking people to go easy on water.

You seem to think that the desalination plants will make a big difference. No pun intended, but they are hardly more than a drop in the ocean. If they ran flat out 24/7/52, you would not fill even one of the larger reservoirs with their output. If we had 4 more of them at 50,000 t/day output, we could satisfy requirements for potable water but, at $1/t economic cost and the CO2 production doubling our greenhouse gas emissions, in the way of pollution, the environmental cost would be gigantic.

[sk]

i guess devil is right .......hopefully this drought will make them complete the desalination programm,its better late than never.
but lets hope that january and february wont let us down

[Mikros]

Devil I'll agree with you in this subject. Water planning down here simply ...sucks, as in all planning that all of our governments were planning to do. Take it simply as a fact that we, the inhabitants have to try to save water insted of wasting it washing the streets and pavements ...