Turkish water to north cut off due to power cuts
Water being pumped to the north from Turkey was completely cut off from the north’s water supply due to ongoing power cuts in the area near the Panagra reservoir, where the water from Turkey arrives.
Turkish Cypriot Kyrenia mayor Murat Senkul confirmed that the water had been cut off, announcing in a post on social media that water from Turkey is no longer being supplied to his town.
“We have been told since last week that we were not getting enough water due to power cuts in the Panagra area and we were trying to make up for it with local resources. As of this morning, the flow of water from Panagra to Kyrenia’s main water tanks has completely stopped,” he said.
He added, “we will be trying to provide alternative water with local resources. We are trying to find out exactly what the problem is across the country and how long it will last. From this point on, let’s use water sparingly.”
Disruptions in the flow of water from Panagra had impacted Lefka last week, with mayor Aziz Kaya telling newspaper Kibris on Friday that the village had also been without water.
Lefka had also been forced to provide its residents with “alternative water”, but the local sources are not enough for water to be constantly supplied across the area.
“We do not currently have the capacity to provide water everywhere 24 hours a day, but we are trying to deliver water to every part of the municipality in a rotating manner every day,” Kaya said.
The north’s water board announced on Monday that the power cut which had caused the water to stop being pumped had been fixed in the morning, and that the water pumps at Panagra had been turned back on.
They also requested that people “use water conscientiously and economically” in the coming hours and days, “as it will take time for the empty pipes to be refilled and for the system to return to normal”.
This is the second time in four months that water being pumped into the north from Turkey has been cut off, with a fault at the pumping station near Panagra forcing the water to be cut off in June.
Last year, biologists Niyazi Turkseven and Hasan Sarpten had warned against complacency regarding the north’s water supply.
“We look at the water in Panagra coming from Turkey and ignore the local water supply problems. However, we do not think that even the water of the ‘motherland’ can be a solution to our problems,” they said.
Water from Turkey has been flowing into the north since 2015, when the undersea pipeline was completed, securing a water supply which had until then been unstable and prone to shortages.
The pipeline snapped in January 2020, but was fixed in the October of the same year.