Item by Chris Coleman, President of KVHA in the latest edition of Kamares Village News
Everyone seems to be talking about water, and so shall I. The last two weeks have been hot. People need more water, and there hasn't been enough. The simple fact is that supply is less than demand. That means some people are bound to experience dry pipes. But some people are unfairly affected far, far more than others.
I can’t offer an instant solution, though hopefully persuasion will bring about a larger allocation.
To understand how our water supply system works, you need to know that Kamares is divided into three parts. Each area is fed from a different storage tank.
If you live west of a line roughly following Tala Avenue, Mary Leptos Street and Zelemenos Avenue (as far as the Zelemenos turn-off), then your supply comes from a tank near the amphitheatre. No, not the big new tank, which has not been connected; it’s an old one, which is fine. You share this with part of Tala.
If you live above the level of the Kamares Club (roughly), then you are served by the tank on Levanta Street (off the road to Koili).
If you live in between (below Kamares Club level) your water comes from a tank by the tennis courts.
Now let’s look at how the tanks are connected.
The amphitheatre tank is supplied from Lofos, about half-way up Stephanie Hill.
The Levanta Street tank is supplied from the main Kamares tank, which amazingly is situated the other side of Melissovounou, and that tank gets its supply from the same Lofos tank.
The tennis court tank is supplied from Levanta Street. Oh dear! This is where the distribution problem lies. Those other houses getting their water from that tank don’t have a chance. The lower Kamares houses can keep using water from the tennis-court tank, even if the Levanta Street tank is dry. When the Levanta Street tank starts to fill, much of its water goes straight down to refill the tennis-court tank.
What can be done? Two things:
(1) Increase the supply to meet demand. That’s easier said than done. Tala and Kamares populations have increased, but the Water Development Department refuses to supply more water from Paphos. They limit it to 120/130 tons/hour (about 3000 tons/day), but 140 tons/hour is needed. It used to be all right to top up from boreholes, but this is mostly prohibited since the introduction of EU rules on water treatment. Hopefully the Water Development Department will be persuaded to increase the allocation, but this is not something that is likely to happen quickly.
(2) Distribute the outages more fairly. The only effective control for this is stopping supply to/from the tennis-court tank, so that houses in lower Kamares are cut off, but the Levanta Street tank has a chance to fill and serve upper Kamares houses.
Both methods were used this week. (1) The council sent twenty lorry loads of twenty tons, 400 tons altogether, at €5 a ton; and they are sending more as I write; but they can’t continue paying that price. They also used other water from a private source, but even that cost twice the average charge to householders. (2) On Wednesday and half of Thursday, supply to lower Kamares was cut off to allow Levanta Street to fill partially. For once, the lower Kamares residents suffered (slightly). With the present infrastructure, I expect that will have to be repeated.
I should point out that it has never been normal practice to cut supply to any part of Kamares. However, no pump will operate below a certain safe water level in its tank; then, when a pump stops, it cannot be restarted for an hour or more while the tank is being filled from a lower tank. And this happens all down the line.
