New or revised pages:
(latest at top)
1 December 2008
Site history
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This subject has been treated
comprehensively in a document published by other collaborators and
myself in 1998/9 and updated in 2008. This paper can be found at
this site. In the
first 6 years after its publication, little had changed except that we
had moved from a drought
situation to a reasonably wet one, with the dams filled to 100 per cent
capacity, for the first time, ever. However, despite three successive
very wet winters, the water tables still did not reach normal levels in
many places. Water is still being wasted in a completely anarchic way
because users will not take the responsibility of their actions. Since
then, we have had another cycle of dry winters and, because nothing was
done, we are suffering even more than we did 10 years ago.
When the first page on this subject was
written in 2004, in the original "Cyprus, the Environment" web, I wrote
the following prophetic paragraph:
Unfortunately, there is too much
complacency and no measures have been taken to ensure that there
will be sufficient water in the event of another drought,
similar to the one we had in the second half of the 1990s. This
will happen, sooner or later,
and Cyprus will be as unprepared as ever; water rationing will become
inevitable again and agriculture will be unable to cope. At least two more
40-50 kilotonne/day desalination plants are required to avoid this
happening. Construction should begin now.
Further Reading
Water in Cyprus (2008)
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