Syria’s ongoing water crisis has become so severe in recent weeks, that Damascus residents are currently supplied with running water for a mere four hours daily, reported the Gulf News. Most recently, the Fijah spring, which has supplied Damascus with water for over 4,000 years, has nearly completely dried.
Prior to the recent stiffening of measures, Damascus’ four million residents were supplied with water for only eight hours a day. Average daily demand for water in the capital stands at 750,000 cubic meters, while supplies reach only 317,000 cubic meters, according to Adb Zain Al-Abidin, the director-general of the Damascus Water Authority, quoted by the Tishrin daily.
The crisis has been attributed to a dramatic population growth, along with an alarming 50 percent drop in rainfall in the past three years, leading to a rapid depletion in water reserves. Growing nearly three-fold over the past three decades, Syria’s 18-million population is expected to reach some 24 million by 2010, according to official forecasts.
However, implementing only short-term preservation steps such as the public rationing campaign will not do in dealing with such a dire problem. Realizing that the country’s water needs ― currently at some 20 billion cubic meters annually ― will only rise, the Syrian government is seeking long-term solutions to the exacerbating situation.
In order to meet the ever-growing water demand, experts point to the urgent need to overhaul the country’s leaking water pipes and inefficient irrigation system, causing intolerable waste of this preciously scarce resource. Other recommended measures include establishing desalination facilities and increase regional cooperation.
Taking the form of water-sharing agreements, Syria is already involved in several such initiatives with its neighboring countries, excluding Israel. Despite its own problems, Syria has been pumping water to Jordan under a 1999 agreement that has seen it supply its neighbor with some eight million cubic meters a year, reported AFP.
Syria, along with Iraq, wants to strike a deal with Turkey over sharing the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Some 88.7 percent of the total water potential of the Euphrates basin originates in Turkey, while only 11.3 percent, originates in Syria. For its part, Syria has demanded 22 percent of the water from the Euphrates basin.
According to a 1987 agreement, Ankara should provide Syria with a 500 cubic meters per second quota of water from the Euphrates River. However, mistrust and volatility dominate the agreement's implementation, as Turkey embarks on major hydraulic projects for the development of southeast Anatolia.
Last month Syrian sources complained that Turkey is allowing Syria only 300 cubic meters of the agreed quota. However Damascus was apparently trying to avoid “political escalation” over water, which has been a point of friction between the two countries in the past, in view of the recent warming of Syrian-Turkish relationship. ― (MENA Report)
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
