Thursday, September 15, 2011

Cyprus sewerage digging work continuing...

It's amazing how quickly one gets used to noise in the street, and general disruption in the neighbourhood. It's been ongoing for some time, with routes by car changing almost by the day as different places have been dug up for the local sewerage and (theoretically) storm drain project that is gradually taking place all around Cyprus.

It was almost two weeks ago when the digging started, in earnest, in our little bit of street. It only took a few days for the main pipes to be laid, then the hole was filled in again. The workmen kept going from about 7.00am every morning until 3.00pm, at which point they stopped, left the machines lying around, put up a few fences for a low-key kind of security, and departed.

They didn't work weekends, either. But our road was inaccessible for several days, meaning that rubbish piled up since, obviously, the dustmen (garbage collectors) could not drive into the road. However, by last weekend peace was more-or-less reigning, the road was accessible again, and the cats were able to relax.

Then it started up once more. This time, channels had to be dug across the road, to begin the process of connecting the sewers with the current septic tanks that we all have. Not that we'll be able to use the drains for some time - possibly several years - since everything has to be in place beforehand. The trenches were probably a couple of metres deep:


There were rough metal sheets over the pavement enabling us to walk down the street, so we weren't actually imprisoned entirely in our houses:


And there was a rather puzzling (typically Cypriot) diversion sign at the T-junction at one end of our road:


Puzzling for two reasons:
(1) Nobody could drive - or even walk - straight ahead anyway since there are houses there.
(2) Nobody could even drive up to that sign, since our road was closed.

Yesterday, they filled in the holes. It was excessively noisy and dusty, but by 3.00pm our road was open again. It looks rather a mess and is pretty bumpy:


But perhaps, one day, they will come back to re-surface it. Probably a week or two before the electricity or phone company comes to dig it up again for some other purpose...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

To bad to see a country that old is literary going down the drain..