Cyprus dam levels remain at a disheartening 9.4% despite recent rainfall from storm Byron, with inflows of just over half a million cubic metres recorded over the last four days, a senior water official said.
The dam picture last week is the same as before the rains due to the prolonged drought of the last four years, Marios Chatzikostis, First Technical Engineer of the Water Development Department, told the Cyprus News Agency.
Inflows to dams after the last four days’ rainfall amounted to just over half a million cubic metres, Chatzikostis said.
“Specifically, it was 554 thousand. Surely this quantity is low for the season, but with the pre-existing data, i.e. the rainfall the winter had until the recent days and the rainfall rate and the location where the rains fell, we didn’t expect anything different,” he said.
“We hope for a good continuation. Fortunately for us it rained. The earth drank it up and was satisfied; the earth quenched its thirst, we hope the earth quenched its thirst, so afterwards, if we have good intensity rainfall, we will have increased inflows to the dams”.
Asked what picture the dams present today, Chatzikostis said the dam picture from last week is the same as before the rains—disheartening, with very low capacity due to the prolonged drought of the last four years.
“We are at 9.4%. Nothing will change in the coming days,” he added.
Answering a related question, Chatzikostis said October and November inflows are always low.
“Last year by this day we had much more flows; we had 4.3 million by 9 December last year, but the year ended badly with 18.6 million total inflow,” he said. “The early months of the hydrological year inflows mean nothing. We hope to have a good continuation. The good inflows we had in years with enormous inflows to the dams were with a good December and very strong January”.
He noted that records were recorded in January 2019 with 118 million cubic metres and January 2022 with 74 million cubic metres.
“To have such quantities, however, we need a good December for the earth to be satisfied so we have good inflows in January, if it rains quite well though, not only normal but beyond normal,” he added.
Chatzikostis said, meanwhile, that what they want to continuously emphasise is that conservation must become a habit.
“We shouldn’t even need the effort to think we must conserve water. It must become a way of life whether it rains or is a heatwave or is winter or is summer. Only with water conservation will we have better days,” he concluded.
(information from CNA)
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