egypt – Water Generating Systems

Climate change may be to blame for persistent flooding in Egypt’s second-largest city, says the World Bank. The city has been burdened by recent heavy rainfall, five times the normal October total. Officials point to a failing water infrastructure, which has compounded the flooding and has caused at least five deaths.

Officials warn the persistent flooding may also impact agriculture and drinking water. Since Alexandria lies low to sea-level, there is a significant risk for seawater to infiltrate the city’s fresh water system. Without an alternative fresh water resource, the possibility could mean catastrophe for a city already in the midst of a crisis.

On a blazing hot summer day, rumours that the water truck is finally arriving spread like wildfire through the village of Ezbit al-Taweel. In minutes, some 100 men, women and children pour onto the town’s main road, each with as many containers as they can carry.

Trying to escape the punishing sun, Osama Sayed and his seven-year-old son, Ahmed, take shelter beneath a bush. “It’s like we’ve travelled back in time, having to wait with jars for the water carrier,” says Sayed. Severe water cuts have repeatedly forced him and the 5,000 other farmers living in this small Nile Delta village to wait hours, sometimes even days, for drinking water, amid a severe heatwave in the Middle East.

Read more of The Guardian‘s story here: ‘We woke up in a desert’ – the water crisis taking hold across Egypt

Tag: egypt

Climate change, persistent flooding impacts Alexandria’s water resources

‘We woke up in a desert’ – the water crisis taking hold across Egypt – – From The Guardian