Filenews 19 September 2025 - by Vasos Vassiliou
The dams of Tamasos, Germasogeia and Polemidia are dangerous in the event of a failure that will lead to the loss of their water, in the sense that at a lower altitude there are communities that can be flooded.
The relevant warning belongs to the executive of the Audit Office, Mr. Akis Kikas, who made a relevant report before the Parliamentary Audit Committee of the Parliament.
Specifically, Mr. Kikas said: Regarding the maps of possible flooding (of the Water Development Department), the three dams, Tamasos, Polemidia and Germasogeia, were characterized as the most dangerous because there are communities under them.
He also noted that the Kouris dam should also be taken care of, in the sense that the Limassol-Paphos road passes at a lower altitude, while there are also communities in the surrounding area.
He also said that there are 15 private dams that must be checked. As he explained, their construction has not been harmonized with the provisions of the legislation (on unified water management passed in 2010).
The person responsible for the safety of the dams, Mrs. Stella Patsali, stated that the most dangerous dam is that of Polemidia.
Referring to the issue of the maintenance of the dams, Mr. Kikas said that when the Service prepared a relevant report in 2016, serious weaknesses were found in the issue of maintenance, while it emerged that experienced staff (in matters of maintenance) left the Water Development Department (WDD).
He further explained that the law provides that on an annual basis each supervising engineer must submit a report to the director of the WDD on the condition of the dam and he is obliged to submit his own report to the Minister of Agriculture.
Mr. Kikas then stated the following: In the reports, the WDD itself records weaknesses. For example, for preventive maintenance, it is stated that there is no systematic maintenance in all dams, especially in the electromechanical equipment. We were told, for example, that many vents or outlet valves had not been opened for years, so the Department could not assess whether they would work in an emergency. Also, many monitoring instruments in a number of large dams were abandoned. When we saw them, we were worried about it and we recorded them.
As Ms. Patsali confirmed, these warnings are included in the Department's reports to the Minister of Agriculture for the years 2023 and 2024."
Mr. Kikas also said that every ten years the large dams must be inspected by an independent engineer. To date, we have not detected any such checks, he added. "We indicated this in 2016 as well," he added.
Ms. Patsali, answering a question from the chairman of the Parliamentary Audit Committee, stated that the Mavrokolympos dam, whose water was emptied due to a problem that occurred (failure/breakage of a pipeline), was built after a study by Yugoslavs and this provided that the dam tower would be submerged in water. The Polemidia dams were built in the same way, of Germasogeia, Argaka and Agia Marina, with all that this implies in terms of possible future failures.
It is noted that the pipeline that missed/broke was metal.
