Cyprus Mail 23 March 2025 - by Iole Damaskinos
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| The desalination plant at Vasiliko |
Should the drought persist, 2026 will constitute a crisis year
Efforts to mitigate the country’s water shortage are intensely focussed on the rapid acquisition of desalination plants, viewed as the most effective way to secure long term adequacy.
However, questions abound about how quickly the plants can be built given their cost, as well as more fundamental questions as to how water procured will be allocated, accounted for and managed.
Water Development Department (WDD) director George Kazantzis said this week the island’s present drinking water supply would likely last through the beginning of next year (despite potential rationing in Limassol and Paphos), but should the drought persist, 2026 would constitute a crisis year.
The latest data publicly available from the WDD show that agricultural irrigation water makes up 70 per cent of the total use with drinking water making up the remainder (including around 5 per cent for tourism and 3 per cent for industry).
This simple categorisation, however, obscures the fact that the “drinking” category encompasses multiple uses, including: supply of factories, power stations, the construction industry, swimming pools, water parks and some livestock installations – which puts a different spin on subsequent data that 70 per cent of “drinking water” is desalinated with the implication that 30 per cent is left to be secured.
Many locals rely on bottled water for their drinking needs, both domestic and imported, and according to the Observatory for Economic Complexity, in 2023 Cyprus actually exported some €564,000 worth of [bottled] drinking water to Greece, Turkey, Germany, the United Kingdom and Bulgaria.
In the same year, Cyprus imported drinking water, at a cost of €14 million, from Greece, France, Italy, Georgia and Austria.
Leaving aside the puzzle of fiscal (and environmental) inefficiency of water exchanges with Greece, it is clear that water scarcity cannot be resolved through imports – despite the disastrous precedent set during the acute summer shortage in 2008, when Cyprus imported eight million m3 of water from Greece via tankers, to the tune of €40m.
The facts illustrate the underlying reality that water management and allocation are not based simply on practical considerations to ensure the public’s basic needs are met. To the contrary, under the shrill cry of “water emergency” multiple – at times competing – financial interests are jostling to be heard.
Water from the Mediterranean sea is thus seen as an easy and abundant solution for all categories, as well as a means to end the island’s aridity problem.
Indeed, neighbouring Israel, which shares the same climate, is a world leader in desalination. Its five massive plants currently supply about 75 per cent of that country’s urban water.
According to Israel’s water authority, a new plant will soon ensure that 90 per cent of the state’s supply for drinking, agriculture and industry comes from desalinated seawater, and this is expected to rise to 100 per cent in future years.
Cyprus’ five large desalination plants and 24 smaller units built to date, of which the larger units had the capacity to produce 235,000 m3 of water/day, when the now destroyed Kouklia plant was still in operation, are officially said to satisfy 70 per cent of demand with the rest sourced from processed reservoir water.
Two new planned permanent units and four mobile units, are expected bump up this total up to 510,000 m3/day, ensuring 100 per cent of Cyprus’ non-agricultural needs will be covered for the upcoming decades.
The WDDs stated goal is for reservoir water to thereby be freed up for irrigation, the utility of which is unclear, if climate projections predicting a 20 per cent precipitation decrease by 2050, are to be believed.
The solution to this has been the projected increase of irrigation water from treated effluent which, however, increases contamination of ground water to varying degrees.
As for desalination, its environmental effects on marine life (particularly the Posidonia meadows which are carbon sinks and biodiversity keystones) are documented, but proponents have argued that discharged brine water affects only the immediate adjacent area and is only significant in shallow-water operations, such as those in the Gulf States.
Solutions such as brine water recovery have been proposed but their costs-benefit analysis remains inconclusive.
The question is not a minor one as longer-term environmental repercussions could impact significantly on local tourism.
Moreover, desalination plants have high energy requirements and related high CO2 emissions – adding to their operational cost via EU fines. And ultimately any water produced by them is only as sustainable as the uses to which it is put.
In its efforts to procure desalinated water as soon as possible, the state in January announced bids to rent floating desalination units, as well as for additional land units. Their evaluation is underway with the aim to secure a solution within the year or in early 2026, at the latest.
Despite the hoped-for benefit of speedier procurement, cost-effectiveness proved a sticking point as far as floating units are concerned. Their output had been reported as much as three times costlier than water from coastal plants, that is €6 per m3, as compared with roughly €2.
Elsewhere, the process for four mobile desalination units is underway with the Kissonerga plant, in Paphos’ Potima Bay, assigned priority. The cost of the new units had been estimated at €66.4 million, of which €18.8 million for construction. Expected to operate by November, the new mobile plant, like the others, is to have a production capacity of 10,000 m3/day.
The terms stipulate the plant must be in operation within seven months of the contract’s signing, with a financial incentive in place if this is achieved sooner (no earlier than four months).
The tender process for the remaining three units is reportedly at an advanced stage, with an estimated delivery time of early 2026.
Bidding for a unit in the Garylli area in Limassol, with an estimated cost of €9 million, is to expire on April 11. Two other plants, in Moni and at Limassol port, are to be announced in early April – should permit approvals proceed smoothly.
On another front, licensing for small desalination plants owned by hotels and farmers has been simplified. The WDD and the deputy ministry of tourism are promoting their uptake, understood to be via an energy subsidy, yet complaints have been filed about the difficulty of securing funds – at least for farmers.
Private owners may construct and operate a unit with a capacity of up to 1500m3/day. Two such plants are already in operation at the Parklane and Amathus Beach hotels in Limassol.
While the island is unlikely to see a repetition of the folly of having to ship in water, emergency measures in 2008 had included the cutting of domestic water supply by 25-30 per cent.
Seventeen years later rationing looms and it remains to be seen if desalination contracts will be secured in a timely manner and at what cost.
According to one assessment, water demand in Cyprus has been estimated at 200 litre per person per day whereas the basic water needs for human subsistence (drinking, cooking and basic sanitation) are estimated at 20-50 litres.
Even if these numbers are exaggerated the volumes of water lost from leakage and unaccounted for (estimated by the WDD as up to 50 and 20 per cent respectively) suggest that water adequacy may only be achieved through rigorous pricing, set to reflect the actual scarcity and true cost of water.
