A reader asked how much closer four new desalination plants will bring Cyprus to breaking even on water. The honest answer needs a map of the whole system first: what comes in, what goes out, and where the two meet. Desalinated water never reaches a dam. It helps the dams only when it replaces dam water at the tap, and that is a smaller number than the plants' capacity suggests.
In our review of the 2025/26 hydrological year we wrote that the dams need about 77 mln. m³ of inflow to end next September where they started, and that a typical winter brings about 55. A reader wrote back with a fair question. The government has approved four new desalination plants with a combined capacity of 180,000 m³ a day, about 66 mln. m³ a year. Doesn't that close the gap three times over?
It doesn't, and the reason is plumbing. The plants do not pour water into reservoirs. They feed the drinking-water network. So the question is really about where the dams' water goes, and how much of it a desalination plant can stand in for. To answer it, follow the water.
The whole system in one picture
The last year with a complete set of official figures is 2024. It fell in the middle of a three-year dry spell, and it shows.
Where Cyprus's water came from in 2024, and where it went
Sources on the left, uses on the right, in mln. m³; the width of each band is its volume. The dams gave out 84.6 while only 29.0 flowed in, so most of it came out of storage. Hatched bands are estimates.
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Taps and farms: Water Development Department supply and irrigation tables for the Government Water Works, 2024. Recharge and private boreholes: Eurostat (env_wat_abs); the borehole figure is a standing estimate, not a measurement. Evaporation and other losses: what is left of the 18 main dams' outflow after deliveries, Fragmata's calculation from WDD storage and inflow. Villages on their own boreholes (roughly 12 mln. m³) are not shown.
| In, 2024 | mln. m³ | Out, 2024 | mln. m³ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Desalination | 74.9 | Taps | 112.6 |
| Dams | 84.6 | Evaporation and other losses | 13.2 |
| Government boreholes | 15.5 | Aquifer recharge | 3.1 |
| Recycled water | 14.2 | Farms | about 168 |
| Private boreholes (estimate) | about 108 |
Three things stand out. Farms use more water than homes do, and most of it comes from boreholes that nobody meters. Taps are mostly supplied by the sea. And the dams, the part of the system Fragmata watches every day, are the swing source for both.
The ins
Rain, by way of the dams. This is the source that cannot be planned. Over the last eleven seasons the 18 main dams took in as little as 18 mln. m³ and as much as 265. In calendar 2024 they received 29 and gave out 84.6. The difference, almost 56 mln. m³, came out of storage, which is how the dams got to the lows of last winter.
Desalination. This is the source that can be planned. Five permanent plants (Dhekelia, Larnaca, Vasilikos, Episkopi and Paphos) have a combined capacity of 235,000 m³ a day, and four mobile units added since 2025 bring it to 282,000. In 2024 the plants produced 77.2 mln. m³, of which 74.9 went to taps.
Desalination is also a dial. The same plants supplied 76% of tap water in 2016, a drought year, and 33% in 2020, when the dams were full and the plants were parked to save money. Since March 2025 the stated policy is to run them all the time, whatever the dams hold.
Desalination and the dams take turns at the tap
Drinking water supplied by the Government Water Works each year, by source, mln. m³. When the dams are full the plants are throttled back: desalination was 76% of supply in 2016 and 33% in 2020. In 2024 it was 67%.
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Cyprus Water Development Department, «Πηγές Ύδρευσης» (water supply by source), 1997–2024. Tankers: water shipped from Greece in 2008–09.
Groundwater. The largest source on the island is the one with the weakest numbers. Farms pump an estimated 108 mln. m³ a year from private boreholes. The figure reported to Eurostat has not moved in years because it is an estimate, not a reading. The Audit Office found 14 of the island's 22 groundwater bodies in bad condition, several with seawater moving in.
Recycled water. Treated wastewater supplied 14.2 mln. m³ to farms in 2024. It is the one farm source that is growing.
The outs
Taps. The Government Water Works delivered 112.6 mln. m³ of drinking water in 2024: 66.5% desalinated, 31% from dams, the rest from boreholes. Demand has grown from 79.7 mln. m³ in 2014, about 3.5% a year.
Farms. About 168 mln. m³, of which the dams supplied 33.7, a fifth. In a year without restrictions farms take about 44 from the dams. In 2025 their allocation was cut by half.
Evaporation and other losses. About 13 mln. m³ left the reservoirs in 2024 without reaching anyone. The department's own figure for evaporation was 14.2 in 2023 and 18.0 in 2022, when the dams held more. Fuller reservoirs have a larger surface and lose more.
Aquifer recharge. About 3 mln. m³ was released on purpose to refill aquifers downstream.
Spills are missing from every table. When a dam overflows, the water that goes over the top is not measured.
Where the two meet
Look only at the dams. Of what they delivered in 2024, taps took 34.6 mln. m³ and farms 33.7. Over 2016–2024, by our estimate, about 40% of everything that left the dams went to taps, 40% to farms, 4% to recharge and 16% to evaporation and other losses.
A desalination plant can replace only the first of those. It cannot irrigate a field at a price a farmer can pay, it cannot stop evaporation, and it cannot refill an aquifer. So the most that desalination can spare the dams is what the dams still send to the taps: 34.6 mln. m³ in 2024, and about 31 a year at today's storage if the past is a guide. Not 66.
This summer, week by week
Since June the Water Development Department has published a weekly bulletin with the output of every desalination unit and every treatment plant, and the department has shared its earlier editions with us. Treatment plants are the route by which dam water reaches the taps, so for the first time the tap duty can be followed week by week.
Where the tap water came from, week by week
Drinking water produced each week by the desalination units and by the treatment plants that take water from the dams, m³ a day. Desalination's share fell from 76% in the week to 8 Jun to 68% in the week to 14 Sep. Only weeks with a published bulletin are shown; there is none for August.
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Cyprus Water Development Department, weekly «Δελτίο Νερού» workbooks, 2026 (plant output published from June). Treatment-plant output is mostly dam water; Tersefanou also treats some desalinated water from Vasilikos a second time.
Three things show up. First, desalination ran close to its limit: 257,000 to 264,000 m³ a day through June and July, out of roughly 280,000 in service. Second, the dams' share of tap water grew with summer demand. The treatment plants took 83,000 m³ a day in early June and 115,000 by mid-September, about 3.0 mln. m³ a month across the weeks on record. The year's plan allows the dams about 24 mln. m³ for taps, 2 a month, so this summer ran well above it. Third, the mobile unit at Kissonerga, which made about 11,000 m³ a day through July, was producing almost nothing by September.
Over those weeks the treatment plants took 54% to 62% of everything the dams released. With irrigation cut back, drinking water has become the dams' main job.
What is planned
On 2 September the cabinet approved three new permanent plants: Dhekelia (80,000 m³ a day), Agia Thekla (30,000) and Polis Chrysochous (10,000). With East Limassol (60,000), approved earlier, that makes the 180,000 our reader asked about.
Three details change the sum. The new Dhekelia plant replaces the existing one, so the net addition is about 120,000 m³ a day, roughly 39 mln. m³ a year at the load the contracts assume. None of the four has been tendered, and the dates now given are 2029 for East Limassol, 2030 for Dhekelia and Agia Thekla, and 2031 for Polis. And demand for drinking water is growing by 4 to 6 mln. m³ every year, which uses up a mid-sized plant annually before the dams see any relief.
It is not free either. The state has budgeted €142 million to buy water in 2026. Each cubic metre takes about 3.4 kWh of electricity, and the plants use about 4% of what the island generates.
So, to our reader
If every planned plant is built and runs, desalination could in time take over nearly all of the dams' tap duty, around 30 mln. m³ a year. That is more than the 22 mln. m³ by which a typical winter falls short, so on paper the gap closes.
Two things stand between paper and reservoir. The first is time: nothing arrives before 2029. The second is policy. The government has said that dam water freed by desalination is for farmers, and farmers have been about 22 mln. m³ a year short of a normal allocation in both 2025 and 2026. Water that stays in a dam and water released to an orchard are both good uses. Only the first raises the level on Fragmata's dashboard.
So the plants will decide who gets the dams' water more than how much the dams hold. How full they are next autumn still depends on the two things it always has: the winter, and the irrigation decision that follows it.
We will be following desalination more closely from here on. Every plant, its status and its weekly output now has its own page on Fragmata. If there is something about it you want to see, write to us.
Author: Vladimir Bugay, Fragmata developer Data: figures are for calendar 2024 unless stated. Drinking water and irrigation by source: Cyprus Water Development Department tables for the Government Water Works. Desalination output: Eurostat (env_wat_use). Private boreholes: Eurostat's groundwater abstraction for agriculture (120 mln. m³, an estimate) less government boreholes; nobody measures it. Dam inflow, storage and "evaporation and other losses": Fragmata's calculation for the 18 main dams (290.804 mln. m³ capacity) from department storage and inflow figures, where the losses are what remains of the outflow after recorded deliveries. Villages supplied only by their own boreholes, roughly 12 mln. m³ and a tenth of the population, are not included. Plant capacities and contract terms: Audit Office of the Republic, special report ΠΕ/01/2025. Weekly figures: the department's «Δελτίο Νερού» bulletins for six weeks between June and September 2026, including back editions it shared with Fragmata; treatment-plant output is mostly dam water, though Tersefanou also re-treats some desalinated water from Vasilikos. The 77 and 55 mln. m³ figures are from our 2025/26 review; 55 is a median winter, and against the average winter the dams at this level are roughly in balance. The 2016–2024 shares, the "about 31 mln. m³ at today's storage" and the farmers' shortfall of about 22 mln. m³ are our estimates from the same tables and from reported allocation decisions. The net capacity of the new plants assumes the existing Dhekelia plant closes when its replacement opens, as reported; this is not in the cabinet's announcement.