The Mavrokolympos reservoir, which was entirely drained in January to fix a corroded vent, has now reopened and is receiving water, the water development department’s deputy director-general Elena Finikaridou said on Thursday.

She told the House audit committee that the vent had “deteriorated to such an extent that it could not be addressed” without the reservoir being drained, but that the problem has now been addressed.

The reservoir had been entirely drained of its 1.4 million cubic metres of water, with experts saying at the time that the reservoir’s pipes, which were installed in 1966, would have to be replaced.

Committee chairman and Diko MP Zacharias Koulias then asked the department’s dam safety service’s head Stella Patsali why the reservoir needed to be drained for the dam to be fixed and said that this was because “the dam was built with a Yugoslav design”.

This, she said, meant that its infrastructure would be submerged when the reservoir was full.

She added that the Polemidia, Yermasoyia, Argaka, and Ayia Marina reservoirs have all been constructed in the same way.

MPs also raised questions regarding the department’s ability to maintain dams, with Patsali saying that her service “did not exist in previous years as a result of a hiring freeze brought about by the economic crisis”.

She said that for dam infrastructure to function, an engineer must carry out a “test operation” once every six months.

The Mavrokolympos dam

Asked by Koulias about the state of the dam safety service’s staff, she said it needs seven new workers to join its existing team. As such, he asked her to submit a memorandum detailing the team’s needs.

Akel MP Irene Charalambides said Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou and her ministry’s permanent secretary Andreas Gregoriou should have attended Thursday’s meeting “to apologise for the situation which arose due to water shortages”.

“What have they done in the last 10 years?” she asked.

Dipa MP Alekos Tryfonides then spoke about the Solea dam, which was constructed and then never connected to any other infrastructure.

“Why has there been no piping in the area for 10 years to irrigate the area’s crops? When will the pipeline be installed?” he asked, with Finikaridou saying that her department was providing water to the Solea area, but that no “irrigation committee” had been formed there.

Then, audit office representative Akis Kikas said that while the Solea dam receives water, “the water is not being distributed to farmers in the appropriate manner because there is no appropriate network”.

Speaking after the session, Koulias said that at present, “the situation is indeed dramatic for the dams” and that “today, there is an urgent need to maintain the dangerous dams which are above populated areas”.

“If not, if a dam breaks, we will mourn lives,” he said, before calling on the government, President Nikos Christodoulides, and Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou to “take action immediately”.