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Thursday, April 25, 2024 23:16 GMT
The sector of water resources has made, in 60 years of independence, big achievements that helped increasing drinking water supply to reach 3,6 Bcm, ensuring a fair and balanced distribution of water and laying the foundations of the national strategy to achieve the water security, through the alternative resources, including the desalination of seawater. The sector, which seeks to ensure water security in Algeria through the different programs launched since the recovery of the national sovereignty, on 5 July 1962, has made several achievements, despite the challenges it faces, such as low rainfalls and a rapid demographic growth, in addition to the country’s surface area. In these 60 years of independence, the sector of water resources succeeded in extending the drinking water network to achieve, by the end of 2021, 143,000km, knowing that only the European settlers living in big cities had access to drinking water just on the eve of the independence, the Ministry of Water Resources and Water Security told APS.The same services reported 116 surface water treatment stations by the end 2021, with a capacity of 5,858,700 cubic meters/day. The volume of domestic drinking water supply reached 3,6 Bcm in 2021, 50% of which comes from groundwater tables, 33% from surface water and 17% from seawater desalination. Dams are among the projects which required considerable budgets during these last sixty years. The storage capacity of dams in Algeria increased from 908.8 Mcm (13 dams) in 1962 to more than 8,6 Bcm today with more than 80 dams, only 75 of which are really exploited. The sector has adopted a national strategy of connecting storage facilities, in the form of regional systems, like the “Mao system” and “Beni Haroun system.” Since 1962 to date, a total of 16 facilities and big transfers have been created to collect surface waters. As regards groundwater, Algeria has currently 281,000 exploited wells with a capacity of more than 6.6 Bcm, according to the source, adding that 27,200 wells have been built and financed by the public Treasury. The sector has also executed and exploited, to date, several seawater demineralization projects at the level of 34 stations, with a production capacity of 52.6 Mcm/y, in order to strengthen the drinking water supply for 1,166,715 inhabitants. Concerning agricultural irrigation, there are today 45 big irrigated areas, with an area of 279,000 hectares, surrounded with 45 huge dams, against 7 areas in 1962, with a surface area of 105,000 hectares, including only 44,000 hectares of real irrigated area, because of low rate of water resources stored in dams. These lands are irrigated from the dam waters or after the reutilization of wastewater, knowing that 200 treatment stations are currently exploited with a capacity of 1.1 Bcm/y, including 20 stations destined to the irrigation of agricultural land, said the source. The executed purification projects enabled reaching a connection rate of 91% in 2021 against only 20% in 1962.