Water crisis: drastic action needed to avoid a grim future 

The island’s water security and the escalating water crisis in the southern Mediterranean have featured prominently of late with the specter of desertification looming large after a summer of back-to-back heatwaves.

Anxiety about water sufficiency was tangible in recurrent headlines marking dwindling water levels in the island’s reservoirs. They currently stand at less than 32 per cent of their capacity, compared with last year’s over 54 per cent.

Farmers in June and July protested at having their water reduced by a third, down further from similar cuts last year.

Water, meanwhile, is leaking from aged pipelines, expensively treated wastewater gets discharged into the sea due to lack of storage, and entire villages still function with poorly designed septic tanks from which water cannot be recouped.

Adding a final flourish to the absurdity, the island’s golf-courses, essentially giant water-guzzling playgrounds for adults, are legally designated as “permanent cultivations”, in other words a golf course owner and an orchard farmer are equally entitled in the eyes of the state.

Amid all this, Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou recently toured Famagusta with her Med9 counterparts, hunting for that elusive thing termed a “holistic approach” to management.

Seizing on a singular example to be emulated, the minister took delegates to a one-of-its-kind hydroponic greenhouse operation in Ormidia, before ushering them on to the new Ayia Napa marina, another rhapsody-in-concrete project.

Speaking to media, the minister said severe droughts are now the new normal and made vague statements about mitigation measures, among them, peddling hydroponic farming and technological miracle cures, such as more accurate weather forecasting.

The state plans to introduce fines, exploit boreholes, reduce water losses, install smart irrigation systems, and subsidise private seawater treatment plants, as well as roll out the prerequisite awareness-raising campaign. A dizzying slew of projects are expected to materialise by 2030.

But many are unconvinced by the rhetoric.

“Water can’t be saved in superficial ways,” says Anna, a smallholder based in Paphos. “The only truly sustainable farming and watering system is a circular one. Plants grow, animals eat them, poop out fertiliser and die, further fertilising the soil. Plants eat the fertiliser and the cycle continues,” says Anna.

Like others who identify themselves as part of a worldwide soil-saving movement, Anna is not overly impressed by touted novel methods or techno-farming as the answer to the water crisis.

Food production and by extension saving both farmers and water, rests on soil quality, she says.

“If you don’t improve the soil with organic matter, any amount of water you pour into it will be wasted. The soil just won’t be able to hold it,” she says.

Techniques like hydroponics are niche activities that may have their place, but you can’t grow nutrient-dense foods to sustain a population, like tree fruits, root crops, or animal feeds this way, she adds. And ultimately there is no substitute for food grown in healthy, well-hydrated soil.

“It’s been a very difficult year,” agriculture ministry director Andreas Gregoriou said. There have been decreased yields from fruit trees, wheat, and vines, he said. The latter are not irrigated, relying solely on rainfall under normal conditions.

The ministry has asked farmers to document crop losses for compensation, Gregoriou said.

Droughts and heatwaves have also decimated the olive harvest, sky-rocketing the price of olive oil, once the most common of Mediterranean commodities.

Simply providing compensation to farmers while “encouraging” them to grow different crops through “new” techniques is unlikely to be realistic, let alone effective in saving the island from a scenario where locally grown food becomes increasingly rare.

Early in the year, the state announced a set hierarchy for water provision: domestic water to homes and tourist areas tops the list. Next comes irrigation of permanent cultivations and thirdly seasonal ones.

None of this of course takes into account wasteful practices in homes (or tourist resorts), nor on farms – and it does not incentivise anyone to conserve.

Greens MP Charalambos Theopemptou, an engineer by training, believes there is a lot of leverage to be gained by focussing the island’s strategy on expanding wastewater treatment and storage capacity.

Storage of water for farming purposes should also be a priority, he says. The agricultural sector accounts for around 70 per cent of overall water usage.

However, groundwater from boreholes, once a common source for farmers, has been overexploited, resulting in saline water intrusion and aquifer depletion. Excessive use of nitrogen fertilisers (also required for golf-greens) as well as antibiotics, have leached into the remaining groundwater supply, making it likely to require treatment to be made safe in future.

Existing rainwater reservoirs and treatment plants were built without adequate planning which took into account growth trends and land use, and, moreover, almost all are poorly regulated, Theopemptou said.

As if all this were not enough, the recent take-over of drinking water supply boards by the district self-governance organisations (EOAs) has shown signs of being a cumbersome endeavour-at least in its initial stages. (Irrigation water is still managed by regional water development departments which oversee reservoirs and purchase treated water for farmers.)

Meanwhile, the island’s five large desalination plants and 24 smaller units supply over 70 per cent of our drinking water (the rest comes mainly from treated dam water). The former technology’s environmental impacts have been documented to have far-reaching negative effects including CO2 emission and brining. Nonetheless the state has set its sights on two new plants.

So how dire is the situation in what experts have labelled “Europe’s most water-stressed nation”? Does our near future hold frequent water cuts and rationing? Composting toilets? Will the state’s awareness campaign soon include the jingle if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down? Or will proposed water taxation for domestic and “green space” irrigation curb wastage and yield some desired results?

It’s hard to say but one gets the sense that while the topic du jour may be the island’s energy security, its water security is not far behind, and is in many ways, beset by identical pitfalls.