GAZA, March 20, 2014 – (WAFA) - The
European Union and UNICEF launched Thursday the construction of a major
seawater desalination plant which will provide 75,000 Palestinians with safe
drinking water in Gaza, a UNICEF press release said.
The project, to be implemented by
UNICEF thanks to a €10 million grant from the European Union, will provide
6,000m3 of desalinated seawater per day to serve residents in Khan Yunis and
Rafah in southern Gaza. The plant is being installed on land adjacent to the
sea near Deir al-Balah.
The European Union Representative,
John Gatt-Rutter, laid the first stone in the presence of representatives of
the Palestinian Water Authority, Gaza’s Coastal Municipal Water Utilities, the
local municipalities and UNICEF.
In his speech at the ceremony
Gatt-Rutter said: 'Access to clean water is a fundamental human right for
all. And yet many Gazans face acute water shortages on a day to day basis.
Others can only access water of very poor quality. The launch of construction
work on this desalination plant offers the prospect of access to clean water
for many thousands of families in Khan Younis and Rafah. It forms part of the
EU's wider commitment to improving the lives of Palestinians in both Gaza and
the West Bank in particular in the area of water, sanitation and solid waste
management'.
The EU Representative added that:
'the situation in the Gaza Strip, including the recent dangerous
escalation and the deteriorating humanitarian conditions, underlines once more
the urgent need to bring a durable solution to the conflict'.
Desalination is the strategic option
chosen by the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA). A comparative study conducted
in 2011 concluded that it was the best pragmatic solution to provide a
consistent supply of safe drinking water to the expanding population in Gaza.
The desalination of seawater from
the Mediterranean will also help alleviate the over-extraction of groundwater
and preserve Gaza’s sole aquifer from total collapse. A 2012 United Nations'
report warned that over-extraction of groundwater could render the coastal
aquifer unusable by 2016.
“Thanks to generous support from the
European Union, there will be greater access to safe drinking water in Gaza,”
said June Kunugi, UNICEF Special Representative and added: “this medium to long
term intervention will remove the daily struggle of 75,000 people to have
sufficient access to water to meet their basic needs.”
The plant is expected to become
operational in 2015.
Only five to ten percent of the
water extracted from the Coastal Aquifer has been found to be suitable for
human consumption. Seawater, sewage and agricultural fertilizer intrusion have
contaminated the water with high levels of chloride and nitrates, in some areas
as high as six times the World Health Organization (WHO) limit.
As a result, more than four out of
five Palestinians in Gaza buy their drinking water from unregulated, private
vendors, a heavy burden on impoverished families and the 1.6 million Gazans
living in one of the highest population-density areas in the world. Some are paying
as much as a third of their household income on water whose quality they cannot
trust, as an estimated four-fifths of the water sold by private vendors is
contaminated.
K.F./T.R.
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