Water Problems in the Gaza Strip

In 2012, the United Nations warned that the Gaza Strip will continue to move toward being uninhabitable by 2020 and its water underground is going to be unsafe for human consumption by 2016. Water problem is more serious than the lack of electricity problem according to the Gaza residents. Water is the base of human health. A specialist of desalinated water warns that the desalinated water sold to the Gaza residents doesn’t contain the mineral elements which are necessary for children’s life. On the other hand, Reuters warns, due to different studies, that more than 90% of groundwater is invalid for drinking and domestic uses. Other resources mention that 96.6% of groundwater is invalid for human consumption. It’s known that the Gaza residents rely on groundwater which the municipalities and some local authorities provide. The groundwater has many serious problems such as increasing salinity and harmful nitrates. Leaking see water and sewage into groundwater is considered a big problem which exists already in the Gaza Strip. Most municipalities don’t supply clean water, so the residents regularly buy filtrated water for drinking. The water processed in the desalination plants is contaminated according to many studies published in Reuters. There is no doubt that this’s worrying because most residents drink the desalinated water. In the light of the United Nations’ studies about the Gaza Strip being uninhabitable by 2020 due to water problems, many international institutions and donor countries funded many projects related to see water desalination. These projects which established in Deir Al-Balah and Khan Yunis supply a small part of residents’ need water. It’s worth mentioning that most of sewage water seeps into the Mediterranean Sea, so that caused sea pollution. The desalination plants provide between 55 million to 600 million cubic meters of desalinated water a year while the demand of two-million-resident is more than 200 million cubic meters. The ideal solution is to build a major desalination plant which costs 5000 million€ (535 million$) to provide the growing demand of water.