The Mazotos Community Council wrote to President Nikos Christodoulides on Monday demanding he personally intervene to cancel the approved desalination plant at Mazotos, calling the current location environmentally and socially unacceptable and requesting an urgent meeting.
The letter, signed by community leader Georgios Dimitriou Pafitis, argues that recent heavy rainfall has significantly improved water reserves across Cyprus, providing the breathing room needed to reconsider decisions taken under pressure and explore alternatives with lower environmental and economic costs.
Scientific and procedural objections
The council bases its opposition on a preliminary assessment conducted in May 2026, which identified four specific failings in the approval process.
No Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment was carried out at national level before the decision was taken, the council said, limiting the evaluation of alternatives for brine management and energy requirements. Key project elements were also deferred to a later stage, preventing a full assessment before decisions were made.
Marine scientists at MER Lab found the site unsuitable due to its proximity to sensitive and ecologically critical marine habitats. The installation of submarine pipelines and brine discharge pose a direct threat to protected Posidonia meadows, which have an extremely slow recovery capacity if damaged, the assessment found.
The council also warned that the area contains documented archaeological findings, and that heavy excavation and marine works could cause irreversible damage to cultural heritage.
“Mobile unit” label disputed
The council took particular issue with the government’s description of the plant as a “mobile” or “temporary” unit — a characterisation residents and councillors challenged directly at a public information meeting on June 15, attended by Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou and government officials.
A project with a daily capacity of 20,000 to 40,000 cubic metres, requiring submarine pipelines, sea channels and extensive coastal works, cannot be described as temporary or easily relocatable, the council said. It is, in their assessment, a large-scale project with permanent, long-term impacts.
Background
The Environmental Authority approved the €85 million plant at the Makaronia site in Mazotos on April 8, 2026, after rejecting three alternative locations — Softades, Maroni and Psematismenos — on national security, environmental and social grounds. The Cabinet approved a special decree bypassing standard planning procedures to accelerate the project, with an operational target of December 2026.
Community opposition surfaced immediately. Residents protested what Pafitis described at the time as the state’s hasty and arbitrary decisions, and the Community Council formally demanded the decision be suspended pending a full independent environmental impact study and an assessment of alternative locations. The council also filed a legal challenge against the approval.
The government has not yet responded to today’s letter. In their appeal to the President, the council said they were requesting a meeting “as soon as possible” and awaited confirmation of a date.
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