KOURIS DAM, Cyprus: A small pool of water at the bottom of Cyprus’s largest reservoir is shrinking by the day: without rain, the main source of surface water for most of the island will dry up by the end of the year.
The sun-baked earth in the empty pit at Kouris is a sign of the unprecedented water crisis facing the Mediterranean island. As climate change takes effect, authorities face the dilemma of how much to use energy-intensive desalination to beat the shortage.
“It’s bad. Very bad,” says Vlassis Partassides, head of water management at Cyprus’s water development department.
“If the drought continues for a fourth year, the consequences will be very severe,” he told Reuters.
Reservoirs are less than 9% full and residents – accustomed to treating water as a precious commodity – are braced for another dry winter. Cypriots’ water bills come with graphs showing monthly consumption, and authorities are swift to alert households to abnormal spikes in use.
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