The construction of a new industrial port in Pentakomo is moving forward at full speed, despite fierce opposition from the local community, environmental groups, and concerned citizens. As works advance, the sheer scale of the looming environmental destruction is becoming increasingly visible.
Earlier this year, environmental activists managed to secure a court injunction halting construction. However, that order was lifted after a new Administrative Court ruling, following a legal maneuver by the state’s Legal Service that added fish-farming operators as “interested parties.” Since then, works have resumed, exposing both the vast size of the port and the scale of intervention in an ecologically fragile area.
Dust, Roads, and Questionable Approvals
The construction has already created major problems for the area. Authorities have allocated additional funds, outside the project’s original budget, for asphalting a nearby road to mitigate dust from heavy vehicles serving the site. Yet this move appears to alter the original permit conditions. If the road had been part of the project from the outset, it might have required a full environmental impact assessment, not just an advisory opinion.
Meanwhile, photographic evidence suggests that basic environmental conditions are being ignored. Condition 45 of the environmental opinion required silt curtains to contain sediment dispersion. Instead, only a few yellow buoys appear to have been installed, doing nothing to stop plumes of sediment spreading into the sea. This poses a serious threat to seagrass meadows, marine life, and the wider ecosystem, in a zone that is also a habitat for the endangered Mediterranean monk seal. It also remains unclear whether an environmental consultant is overseeing the project, or whether a binding contract with the designated assessor even exists.
Contradictory Figures Raise Questions
An examination of the project’s documentation reveals significant discrepancies between the quantities of materials estimated in the environmental study and those listed in tender documents.
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Natural boulders: The environmental opinion estimated 24,000m³ would be needed. Tender documents list 82,300m³ across three separate references, more than triple the figure.
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Breakwaters: The study suggested 11,800m³ of quarry material and aggregates. Tender documents, however, total a staggering 250,400m³, over twice as much.
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Artificial boulders: Environmental study: 14,000m³. Tender documents: 32,600m³.
Such inconsistencies suggest the environmental review may have been based on incomplete or misleading data, grossly underestimating the scale of impact on an already burdened coastal environment.
Unclear Land Infrastructure Plans
Another unresolved issue concerns land-based infrastructure, particularly warehouses for aquaculture companies. Initial designs called for separate, spaced-out facilities to reduce impact. Later, however, written instructions requested the plans be altered to create a unified complex with reduced volume. Legally, these changes should have been resubmitted to the Town Planning Department, but that has not happened. This raises the question: which plans are being followed today, as authorities publicly downplay the project by presenting it as little more than a “fishing harbor”?
Six-Meter-High Concrete Giants
Perhaps most striking is the plan to install colossal six-meter-high artificial boulders rising above sea level, double the usual size for Cypriot ports. Officially, the move is meant to protect the harbor from incoming waves, but critics argue the real reason is to shield onshore facilities from damage.
In an almost absurd twist, authorities reportedly ordered the massive blocks to be painted white to blend with the surrounding cliffs. Environmentalists question why white cement wasn’t used from the start, rather than a coating that will inevitably wear away.
What was initially portrayed as a modest local port now stretches 350 meters into the sea, an industrial-scale project advancing rapidly, and in a way that many fear will permanently scar one of Cyprus’s most environmentally sensitive coastlines.