Govt promises ‘punitive’ charges for overconsumption of water
Increased bill charges described as “punitive” for consumers who use too much water are to be introduced by the government, water development department director Iliana Tofa said on Thursday, with Cyprus continuing to face a water shortage.
“The new fees are before the legal service for legal review and then we will proceed with the new increases,” she told CyBC radio, before adding that “we continue to believe that everyone must understand that they must conserve water”.
Earlier on the same show, Nicosia district government general manager Constantinos Parmaklis said that he believes the legal service’s review of the plans to introduce new, higher fees is nearing its completion.
Once the legal service has declared the plans legal, he said, they will then be sent to the interior ministry for final approval.
He also described the increased fees as “punitive”, and said they will be levied on consumers who use more than 60 cubic metres of water per day.
“The increase may be up to €10 per cubic metre,” he said, before clarifying that at present, the maximum charge per cubic metre is €5.
Any new fees, he said, will be rolled out across the island, with all five district governments having committed to keeping water bill rates uniform.
The plans for increased charges come after agriculture ministry permanent secretary Andreas Gregoriou had warned that the possibility of water cuts is “real”, with the island’s water reserves remaining low.
“We are facing a very difficult year. Such a situation has never arisen before. Despite all the efforts made over the past years with the desalination units and at other levels to restrict the loss of water […] we cannot continue using water the same way at home and at work,” he said on Wednesday.
He added that the government is aiming to avoid water cuts in the summer, despite projections that the island will have 10 per cent less water at its disposal than what it is projected to need.
According to the water development department’s latest statistics, which were released on Tuesday, the island’s reservoirs are only 13.3 per cent full, with just shy of 39 million cubic metres of water currently in them. That figure is a little over half of the number recorded a year ago, when the reservoirs were 26.1 per cent full.
A little over a year prior, in December 2023, there were 133 million cubic metres of water in the reservoirs, meaning they were 45.5 per cent full at the time.
Broken down by area, those near Paphos are now just 14 per cent full – in line with the national average – compared to a figure of 27.4 per cent recorded a year ago.
Reservoirs in the Polis Chrysochous area are faring better, though they are 20.5 per cent full, having been 25.5 per cent full this time last year.
The southern conveyor is facing the biggest shortage, however, with its reservoirs just 11.8 per cent full, having been 25.8 per cent full a year ago.
In particular, the Achna reservoir, one of the eight which feed the island’s southern coast, is just 1.8 per cent full, and thus contains just 120,000 cubic metres of water. This time last year, there was almost 16 times more water in that reservoir alone.
However, the picture is looking rosier in Nicosia, where the district’s three reservoirs are all fuller than they were a year ago. At present, reservoirs in the Nicosia district are 27.9 per cent full, having been 17 per cent full a year ago, with the Kalopanayiotis reservoir at capacity.