Über den Staudamm Mavrokolympos

Mavrokolympos dam is situated in the Paphos district near the village of Kissonerga, close to the western coast and within easy reach of Paphos town. Completed in 1966 with a capacity of 2.1 MCM and standing 30 metres tall, it is one of the smaller dams in the national network, built in the same era as Polemidia as part of Cyprus's first generation of post-independence water infrastructure. The earth-fill structure captures seasonal runoff from the western foothills of the Troodos range — a drier zone compared to the higher central catchments — and channels it toward supporting the agricultural needs of the coastal Paphos lowlands. The area downstream of Mavrokolympos is notable for its banana plantations and citrus groves, crops that require consistent irrigation throughout the dry Mediterranean summer and benefit from reliable water allocation from the reservoir. The western Paphos coast, where Mavrokolympos sits, receives less orographic precipitation than the eastern-facing Troodos slopes, meaning the dam's catchment is more exposed to the high rainfall variability that characterises the drier western coastal strip. In particularly wet winters — such as those following strong La Niña events in the Mediterranean — Mavrokolympos fills rapidly and can spill; in droughts, it may drain to near-empty within a single dry season. Despite its modest size, the dam is a useful indicator of rainfall patterns in the drier western catchments and complements the much larger Asprokremmos reservoir that dominates Paphos district's water budget. The coastal setting gives the reservoir an unusually mild microclimate, with evaporation losses somewhat higher than at higher-altitude Troodos reservoirs.