Algeria uses the water police to combat water scarcity

The Algerian authorities approve an emergency plan to save water in anticipation of an unprecedented drought in the country's history.

ALGIERS - The Algerian government has attached remarkable importance to the water situation in the country, in light of the emergence of signs of a severe drought season, which is the third of its kind in a row, by taking a package of urgent measures in order to provide drinking water and irrigation resources for agricultural crops, and among the most important of these measures is the introduction of Water Police.

The Algerian Council of Ministers approved an urgent plan for the water economy, in anticipation of facing an unprecedented drought in the history of the country and the region in general, as well as the repercussions of climate changes that threaten water and food security, and began to appear in the decline of some agricultural crops, which is what the government wants to confront by generalizing seawater desalination plants. And the establishment of the water police, and the launch of studies to audit the groundwater reservoir.

Mounting fears that the country will lose more of its agricultural capabilities, which will increase the volume of imports, especially in the food field

It seems that the government does not rely much on the amounts of precipitation recorded during the past week, as efforts continue to achieve water security for the country through the launch of various mechanisms. In this regard, a symposium was held in the same week on “Water Security in Algeria,” where the Director of the National Agency for Dams, Mahdi Akkad, stated. His organization “expects an increase in the water storage capacity of dams distributed across the country to about 9 billion cubic meters next year.”

He explained that "the water storage capacities of the 80 dams distributed across the country will increase from 8.3 billion cubic meters currently to about 9 billion cubic meters in 2024, after entering into service five new dams, pending reaching 12 billion cubic meters in 2030."

He pointed out that despite the fact that Algeria has a variety of water sources between the traditional ones, such as groundwater, surface water and rainwater, and the unconventional ones such as seawater desalination plants, the country still suffers from a continuous inability to cover its needs in light of the high demand and scarcity of rainwater in recent years.

Algeria plans to compensate for the scarcity of rainwater and cover the population's needs for drinking water by 60 percent in the year 2030 prospects, through seawater desalination plants, which currently number 11 stations distributed across a number of governorates, and are expected to be supported by others in the future in a number of coastal cities such as the capital, Boumerdes, Bejaia, Oran and El Tarf.

In the last council, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune had called for “mobilizing the interests of the ministries of the interior, water resources, agriculture, industry and the environment, on the widest scale, to create an emergency plan aimed at enacting a new policy for the national water economy and the preservation of groundwater resources.”

And he stressed the need to “re-move and send all the suspended projects, for waste water filtration plants, across the governorates, and put them under exploitation, to be used in agricultural irrigation, instead of groundwater, as well as the creation of a scheme to generalize seawater desalination plants, across the entire coastal strip, to avoid the repercussions of climatic conditions.” difficult times the world is going through.

He also urged the government to strictly monitor licenses for the exploitation of groundwater to irrigate cultivated areas, while imposing maximum penalties against unauthorized drilling of wells, in addition to activating the role of the water police, which specializes in monitoring areas of water use in all fields and combating waste, to monitor water exploitation, through Motherland.

Severe dry season

The Council of Ministers approved “the creation of emerging institutions, within the framework of the perspective of water economy and water security, specialized in wastewater exploitation techniques, and the completion of scientific studies, urgently, to accurately determine the status of our groundwater rate.”

Algeria relies mainly on the supply of drinking and irrigation water on the stocks of dams, which have been deteriorating in recent years due to drought and lack of maintenance, which affected the level of its stocks, which did not exceed 40 percent of its capacity, which created a state of fluctuation in the provision of drinking and irrigation water. remarkably.

The water sector in Algeria counts 80 dams, with a storage capacity of about eight billion cubic liters, of which 65 are in service, while the rest are in need of rehabilitation and restoration, which requires the government to develop a huge plan in the medium and long term to restore balance to the sector.

While some dams date back to the colonial era, the country witnessed a boom in this sector beginning in the new millennium, when about 44 dams were built since the year 2000, but the absence of periodic maintenance and the failure to register new projects in line with the rising needs for water strongly suggest a scenario of thirst and drought. On the horizon, because the available facilities do not provide the country's needs, which are estimated at four billion cubic liters of water annually.

Algeria plans to compensate for the scarcity of rainwater and cover the population's drinking water needs by 60 percent in the horizons of the year 2030, by means of seawater desalination plants.

With these disturbing indicators, fears escalated that the country would lose more of its agricultural capabilities, which would increase the import bill, especially in the food field. Cereal production, which used to provide a third of the annual needs estimated at about 12 million tons, is threatened with a significant decline during the next harvest season.

Agricultural associations had sounded alarm bells due to the accelerating repercussions of climate change in the country, which led to the decline of some seasonal crops, such as honey and citrus, as the production of oranges and tangerines in the Metija plain in the center of the country decreased by about 50 percent.

The parliament had previously organized a symposium on “the future of water resources in Algeria.” The meeting culminated in several recommendations aimed at “activating all possible means in order to expedite the completion of major diversions projects between the Republic’s dams, as well as the collection dams.”

The symposium called for “doubling the water barriers with the rehabilitation of the existing facilities, restoring and reconsidering the dams that record leaks that would affect their absorption capacity, and expanding the network of wastewater purification centers to recover the huge quantities of water for resuscitation in agricultural irrigation networks and non-consumptive industrial use.”