A Fragmata reader asks: the Achna Dam has been empty for ages — so where does the Protaras / Ayia Napa / Paralimni area actually get its drinking water? The answer involves a 40-year-old desalination plant, a single 50-year-old pipeline, and infrastructure projects that exist only on paper.
It's a fair question. You drive past Achna Dam, see cracked mud where water used to be, and wonder how 100,000 people and a few million tourists a year are still getting water out of their taps. The short answer: almost entirely from desalination plants in Dhekelia and Larnaca, piped east through a single aging pipeline. Achna Dam was never the area's drinking water source — and understanding what it actually does helps explain the broader picture.
The two plants keeping the taps running
As of March 2026, desalination supplies over 80% of Cyprus's drinking water nationwide. For the free Famagusta district — Protaras, Ayia Napa, Paralimni, Deryneia, Sotira and surrounding villages — the dependence is even higher.
Two plants do the heavy lifting. The Dhekelia Desalination Plant, located near the British Sovereign Base Area east of Larnaca, is the most critical. Commissioned on April 1, 1997 — Cyprus's very first desalination facility — it now produces 60,000 m³/day of reverse-osmosis treated seawater, operated by Caramondani Desalination Plants Ltd. In the plant's early years, the Famagusta area's water supply came solely from Dhekelia. The Larnaca Desalination Plant (also 60,000 m³/day, operated by a Mekorot-Netcom consortium) serves as a secondary source feeding the same central pipeline network.
Desalinated water from both plants gets blended with any available treated dam water at the Tersefanou Water Treatment Plant near Larnaca, then travels east to the Famagusta district. When the Larnaca plant went offline for maintenance in June 2025, Famagusta experienced immediate supply reductions — a sharp reminder of how thin the margin is.
One pipe, 100,000 people, zero redundancy
Here's the part that should worry anyone living east of Larnaca. The water reaches the Famagusta district through the Choirokoitia–Frenaros pipeline — an asbestos cement pipe over 50 years old. This single pipeline serves approximately 99,500 permanent residents in the free Famagusta area. During peak summer, when the population can triple with tourists, the aging infrastructure faces enormous strain. There is no backup route.
A long-promised solution — the Kokkinokremmos Project — would build a 26 km pipeline directly from Dhekelia to Kokkinokremmos Hill in the Sotira Forest area, where 10 new storage tanks (35,000–40,000 m³ total capacity) would provide 48 hours of supply security during peak demand. First announced by President Anastasiades in 2015 at an estimated cost of €17 million, the project remains unfunded as of February 2026. The Famagusta District Self-Government Organisation president has publicly stated that no written funding confirmation has materialised despite repeated government promises.
Meanwhile, a proposed mobile desalination unit for Ayia Napa (10,000 m³/day, expandable to 20,000) has stalled due to fierce local opposition from the municipality and tourism stakeholders, who object to its proximity to Nissi Beach and Makronissos. A permanent desalination plant for the free Famagusta area is under study, targeting late 2029 — but that's still years away.
The government also plans a replacement Dhekelia plant with expanded capacity of 80,000–100,000 m³/day once the current contract expires around 2027. That would help, but it's the pipeline bottleneck — not plant capacity — that's the immediate vulnerability.
So what is Achna Dam actually for?
Achna Dam sits at roughly 1.8% of its 6.8 MCM capacity — about 122,000 m³ of water in a reservoir designed for nearly 7 million. But it was never meant to supply drinking water.
Built in 1987–88 as the eastern terminal of the Southern Conveyor Project, Achna is a holding tank. Its job is to receive water pumped 110 km through the Southern Conveyor from Kouris Dam in the Troodos mountains, then distribute it to the Kokkinochoria irrigation network — the lifeblood of the region's famous potato farms. The dam sits on the flat, arid Mesaoria plain and has virtually no natural catchment of its own. It doesn't collect rainwater in any meaningful sense; it stores water that arrives through a pipe.
With Kouris Dam at just 12.3% of its 115 MCM capacity and the entire Southern Conveyor system holding far less than the 48 MCM needed to avoid irrigation cutbacks, there is simply no surplus to send to Achna. Adding insult to injury, in February 2024 liquid waste from a nearby livestock farm seeped into the dam, temporarily banning irrigation use of its remaining water.
Achna6.800 mln. m³
The aquifer beneath your feet is mostly gone
Before the dams and desalination plants, the Famagusta coast relied on groundwater. The aquifer beneath the Kokkinochoria ("Red Villages") once sustained the region's agriculture, but it's now roughly 85% depleted. Decades of over-extraction since the 1960s drew out over 350 MCM more than natural recharge could replace. Water levels within 2 km of the coast dropped to 50 metres below sea level. The most productive sections — beneath Ormidhia, Xylophagou, Liopetri and Frenaros — were abandoned due to seawater intrusion as early as the 1980s. Nitrate contamination from intensive potato farming compounds the problem.
Local boreholes still exist as emergency backup — residents report that Ayia Napa draws from boreholes when desalination plants go offline — but this groundwater is increasingly saline and unreliable.
What it all adds up to
The water infrastructure serving the free Famagusta district can be summarised in one uncomfortable sentence: a single 50-year-old pipe delivers desalinated water from 40 km away to 100,000 residents, with no backup pipeline, no local desalination plant, and no functioning dam or aquifer to fall back on.
Three interventions would most directly improve resilience: completing the Kokkinokremmos direct pipeline from Dhekelia, commissioning a local desalination unit (whether at Ayia Napa or an alternative site), and building the replacement Dhekelia plant at expanded capacity. All three are planned. None are under construction. With water demand growing 4–5% annually and climate projections indicating a further 20–35% rainfall decline by century's end, the gap between planning and execution carries increasingly serious consequences.
Since July 2024, local water distribution has been handled by the newly established Famagusta District Local Government Organisation (EOAA), which took over from individual municipal water boards. If you have questions about your local supply, billing, or planned works, they're the first point of contact.
Author: Vladimir Bugay, Fragmata developer Data sources: Cyprus Water Development Department, Fragmata.info, Cyprus Mail, Famagusta News, Institution of Civil Engineers, ScienceDirect. Dam level data updated daily at fragmata.info.