Photo by The Guardian
I arrived in Gaza 10 days ago on behalf of Handicap International, an International NGO working alongside people with disabilities and vulnerable populations, taking action and bearing witness in order to respond to their essential needs, improve their living conditions and promote respect for their dignity and fundamental rights.
Since my arrival I started collecting information and data on the general situation in the strip, with a specific focus on my field of work, that is to say construction, water, sanitation (watsan) and energy issues.
My personal experience here is obviously still very limited, but various papers and reports are available to explain how severe are local conditions and how rapidly they are deteriorating. Not all the documents are updated to 2014, so some of the data may have slightly changed, but the general frame is the same and, to all extents, extremely worrying.
Extracts from ‘ A Systematic Literature Review and Recommendations on Water Usage in the Gaza Strip _Final draft 21 September 2014’ by Norwegian Institute of Public Health in cooperation with The Palestinian National Institute of Public Health, and from ‘Towards sustainable construction and green jobs in the Gaza Strip, by International Labour Organization, 2012:
BACKGROUND
The Gaza strip is a narrow land area located in the South‐eastern Mediterranean Sea, with a length of about 41 km and a width ranging from 6 to 12 km. The Gaza Strip is approximately 365 km2 and home to more than 1.7 million people who live in five governorates. Currently, the Gaza Strip has the sixth highest population density in the world. It is linked to the outside world through two open border crossings with Israel and one with Egypt which has been sealed in October 2014 after Egyptian government declared territory’s rulers, Hamas, a terrorist organization. All materials and goods required for the people in the Gaza strip are officially to enter through the Israeli border crossings. Access to the Mediterranean Sea is limited to three nautical miles along the Gaza coastline.
The population is young, with children under 18 years composing over 50% of the territory’s inhabitants. Over 74% of the population is registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as refugees, of whom over 43% reside in one of eight refugee camps in Gaza. The political conflict has limited the movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza, increasing the poverty and unemployment rates to unprecedented numbers. This complex political and socio-economic context has in turn placed significant pressure on the environmental resources of the area and lead to a serious deterioration in water quality and quantity. The United Nations report 2020 says that Gaza will not be livable in just few years if the current situation continues.
Israel has imposed a strict blockade on the Gaza strip since the Hamas Movement took power over the strip in June 2007. The blockade included the closure of all crossings that link the Gaza strip with Israel, preventing the movement of people and the entry of goods and materials, with the exception of some basic humanitarian necessities. The combined effect of the Israeli war and the blockade, the latter of which is still in force, has deteriorated most infrastructures in Gaza, so that facilities have become inadequate and many are not functioning at all, while public services have been reduced to a minimum. There is currently an acute shortage of energy, drinking and irrigation water, sewage water treatment and housing services in Gaza. Hence, development and economic growth in Gaza is severely challenged and consequently unemployment and poverty is widespread.
The situation is further exacerbated by damaged or destroyed infrastructure due to the ongoing conflict with Israel. For example, during Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009 at least 11 major wells and over 30 kilometers of water networks were destroyed. The ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip has prevented materials for repairs from being imported into the area in order to enable reconstruction.
WATER
The only surface water reaching Gaza is the Wadi Gaza, which originates in the Negev desert in a catchment area of 3,500 km2 with an estimated annual flow of 20‐30 million cubic metres per year. At present, however, water from Wadi Gaza is diverted towards artificial recharge and irrigation within Israel, which means that only minimal amounts of the high winter flow reaches Gaza.
Groundwater from the coastal aquifer, which Gaza shares with Israel, is the main source of water in
the Gaza strip for the various needs (residential, agricultural and industrial). The extraction from the coastal aquifer is estimated at 170 million m3/year (2010) whereas the annual sustainable yield of the aquifer within the geographical boundary of Gaza is widely quoted as 55 million m3/year. The water level is reportedly dropping by 20-30cm per year. Furthermore, due to over extraction, saltwater intrusion is also increasingly occurring because of the pressure differences between the groundwater elevation and sea water level. This has resulted in about 95% of pumped water from the aquifer is currently polluted and considered unfit for drinking purposes. The United Nations has warned that the aquifer might be unusable in 2016 and the damage will be irreversible by 2020.
It is estimated that the annual amount of water pumped from the coastal aquifer in Gaza is about twice that of natural replenishment. In 1990, the total available freshwater in Gaza was 57 million cubic metres, whereas today it is only 35 million cubic metres. The rate of depletion of available freshwater in Gaza is expected to intensify as a consequence of climate change, due to expected decrease in precipitation and increase in evaporation as well as increased incidences of extreme weather phenomena, including droughts and heat waves.
Apart from salt water intrusion, sewage is one of the biggest causes of groundwater contamination in the Gaza Strip. High levels of total and faecal coliform counts have been found in water samples collected from groundwater wells, particularly surrounding the wastewater treatment pond. Several parameters are far over the limits recommended by the WHO and the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) Guidelines. For example, the WHO guidelines for drinking-water quality for chloride levels specify a maximum limit of 250 Cl mg/l compared to the PWA Guidelines, which specify a maximum recommended limit of 600 Cl mg/l. The average Cl levels observed in wells vary from 50 mg/l to 11476 mg/l, which is far over the recommended maximum in both sets of guidelines. Similarly, the WHO guidelines for nitrate levels recommend a maximum of 50 mg/l, compared to the PWA Guidelines, which recommend a maximum of 70 mg/l. The average nitrate levels observed in Gaza wells ranges from 8 mg/l to 528 mg/l, also over the recommended limits from both guidelines.
In addition to being of poor quality, groundwater provided through the municipal infrastructure is scarce. As of September 2011, the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Group of the Palestinian Territories reports that although 98% of Gaza’s residents are connected to the water network, only 48% of household have running water four to seven days a week. The daily water consumption per capita in the Gaza strip is about 80 ‐ 90 litres, which is less than the minimum value (100 ‐ 150 litters) recommended by WHO.
In order to address the increasing salinity in the water supply, the Palestinian Authorities have pursued desalination as a means of increasing the amount of potable water available. Desalinated water is obtained through different sources: there are seven public desalination facilities run by the CMWU, In addition there are at least 40 small scale private plants and more than 20,000 reverse osmosis (RO) housing units, which are often unregulated. A substantial proportion of the Gaza population obtains drinking water from unregulated sellers of desalinated water.
Drinking water from desalination plants is sold on the market by water tankers. As much as 83% of the population use water from tanker cars as the primary household water source. According to a water quality monitoring campaign conducted in 2009, the water from desalination plants is good. However, due to a non-hygienic handling of the water in distribution (e.g. lack of cleaning and chlorination of transport water tanks, contamination of the nozzle on water transport tanks, contamination of customer transport containers, lack of cleaning of home storage tanks and unhygienic handling in homes before drinking), bacteriological contamination has been detected in samples taken from distribution points and in samples taken from household storage tanks.
The price of one cubic meter of desalinated water from private service providers is however approximately 50 NIS (appr. 13 USD), which is about ten times that of the grid water provided by CMWU. Due to the high level of poverty and unemployment, many people cannot afford this high price of clean water. Therefore, many are forced to use polluted water exposing themselves to diseases. According to the Palestinian water authority about 40% of disease incidence cases in the Gaza strip are related to polluted drinking water. Diarrhoea is one of these diseases which cause, according to a UN study in 2009, about 12% of the children deaths in the Gaza strip. Furthermore, it has been estimated that more than half of all children in Gaza aged 6–36 months suffer from anaemia, some of which may be associated with exceptionally high instances of nitrates in the water.
Rainwater in winter is considered a secondary source of water in Gaza, especially for agricultural purposes. The annual average amount of precipitation in Gaza is however low (317 mm/year) due to the location of the Gaza strip in the semi‐arid zone. In spite of the great need for water, rainwater is not efficiently utilized by the private or public sector. A common wrong practice is to drain rainwater into the sewage water drainage system. This practice coupled with the increased urban built areas has led to increase the amount of reusable rainwater that is lost.
The harvesting of rainwater, commonly practiced in the West Bank is not generally conducted by private households in Gaza. Analyses of storm water runoff collected from rooftops suggest that this water source has low concentrations of chloride and nitrate and the water quality is close to the limits set by WHO for drinking purposes. A 2008 study found that residents of Gaza are willing to adopt on-site rooftop rainwater filtration in urban areas where free land is available, but financial incentives from local authorities would be necessary to make this alternative more attractive. There are two types of rainwater collecting tanks: underground tanks and tanks applied above the ground. Underground residential rainwater tanks are usually made of reinforced concrete, and not generally applied in Gaza. In addition to the fact that, they need free land adjacent to the building to be constructed, which is in limited supply in Gaza, they are also very expensive. Above‐the‐ground rainwater tanks are usually made locally of plastic, and are considerably more common than underground tanks, primarily due to the lower costs. In addition to tanks, either underground or above the ground, rainwater collection systems generally also require pumps .
SANITATION
About 60% of households in the Gaza strip are connected to a sewage network, whereas the rest usually apply leaky cesspits or empty raw sewage directly into the environment.
There are four treatment plants currently operational in the north, Gaza, Khan Younis and Rafah provinces. They are designed to treat collected sewage water to the level allowed for discharge in theMediterranean Sea. However, the treatment plants do not work efficiently, due to the shortage of spare parts and materials required to repair them. Additionally, the increased growth of population exceeding the expansion of treatment plants has resulted in plants operating beyond their designed capacity. As a result, a significant amount of sewage water is poured into lagoons, wadis and the sea without proper treatment.
Reusing greywater collected from washing basins, baths and washers is also widely considered as one of the main strategies to reduce potable water consumptions in buildings. It is estimated that about 60% of consumed water by a typical household is turned into greywater. According to a study carried out in Israel, reusing greywater results in saving up to 30% of potable water consumption in a residential building. There are various methods of greywater recycling that differ in terms of complexity depending on the final use of water and available technology. Usually, in rural areas and developing countries, low technology or natural systems, which mainly depend on slow sand filtration, are used. Such systems can be established locally using available building materials and techniques.
Innovative solutions are severely required to provide people with clean and safe water and to treat sewage water in environmentally friendly ways. Therefore, sustainable use of existing water resources and reuse of sewage water should be given special considerations also in the construction and building sector in Gaza.
CONCLUSIONS
No conclusions can be made, apart from the obvious consideration that this tiny slice of land, which is completely dependent on external resources, is rapidly becoming a desert, unlivable place. Which would be a terrifying perspective in itself, but the situation is even worsened by the fact that the hundreds of thousands of people living here are not allowed to decide to move if things get too hard. They’ll have to stay here, no matter what happens to their sources of water, and of course this raises a crucial and urgent question within the international community: when will we all start to really do something about it?
Erika Trabucco_FAREstudio /HANDICAP INTERNATIONAL
Gaza situation at a glance_Chapter one: WATER AND SANITATION
Photo by The Guardian
I arrived in Gaza 10 days ago on behalf of Handicap International, an International NGO working alongside people with disabilities and vulnerable populations, taking action and bearing witness in order to respond to their essential needs, improve their living conditions and promote respect for their dignity and fundamental rights.
Since my arrival I started collecting information and data on the general situation in the strip, with a specific focus on my field of work, that is to say construction, water, sanitation (watsan) and energy issues.
My personal experience here is obviously still very limited, but various papers and reports are available to explain how severe are local conditions and how rapidly they are deteriorating. Not all the documents are updated to 2014, so some of the data may have slightly changed, but the general frame is the same and, to all extents, extremely worrying.
Extracts from ‘ A Systematic Literature Review and Recommendations on Water Usage in the Gaza Strip _Final draft 21 September 2014’ by Norwegian Institute of Public Health in cooperation with The Palestinian National Institute of Public Health, and from ‘Towards sustainable construction and green jobs in the Gaza Strip, by International Labour Organization, 2012:
BACKGROUND
The Gaza strip is a narrow land area located in the South‐eastern Mediterranean Sea, with a length of about 41 km and a width ranging from 6 to 12 km. The Gaza Strip is approximately 365 km2 and home to more than 1.7 million people who live in five governorates. Currently, the Gaza Strip has the sixth highest population density in the world. It is linked to the outside world through two open border crossings with Israel and one with Egypt which has been sealed in October 2014 after Egyptian government declared territory’s rulers, Hamas, a terrorist organization. All materials and goods required for the people in the Gaza strip are officially to enter through the Israeli border crossings. Access to the Mediterranean Sea is limited to three nautical miles along the Gaza coastline.
The population is young, with children under 18 years composing over 50% of the territory’s inhabitants. Over 74% of the population is registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as refugees, of whom over 43% reside in one of eight refugee camps in Gaza. The political conflict has limited the movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza, increasing the poverty and unemployment rates to unprecedented numbers. This complex political and socio-economic context has in turn placed significant pressure on the environmental resources of the area and lead to a serious deterioration in water quality and quantity. The United Nations report 2020 says that Gaza will not be livable in just few years if the current situation continues.
Israel has imposed a strict blockade on the Gaza strip since the Hamas Movement took power over the strip in June 2007. The blockade included the closure of all crossings that link the Gaza strip with Israel, preventing the movement of people and the entry of goods and materials, with the exception of some basic humanitarian necessities. The combined effect of the Israeli war and the blockade, the latter of which is still in force, has deteriorated most infrastructures in Gaza, so that facilities have become inadequate and many are not functioning at all, while public services have been reduced to a minimum. There is currently an acute shortage of energy, drinking and irrigation water, sewage water treatment and housing services in Gaza. Hence, development and economic growth in Gaza is severely challenged and consequently unemployment and poverty is widespread.
The situation is further exacerbated by damaged or destroyed infrastructure due to the ongoing conflict with Israel. For example, during Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009 at least 11 major wells and over 30 kilometers of water networks were destroyed. The ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip has prevented materials for repairs from being imported into the area in order to enable reconstruction.
WATER
The only surface water reaching Gaza is the Wadi Gaza, which originates in the Negev desert in a catchment area of 3,500 km2 with an estimated annual flow of 20‐30 million cubic metres per year. At present, however, water from Wadi Gaza is diverted towards artificial recharge and irrigation within Israel, which means that only minimal amounts of the high winter flow reaches Gaza.
Groundwater from the coastal aquifer, which Gaza shares with Israel, is the main source of water in
the Gaza strip for the various needs (residential, agricultural and industrial). The extraction from the coastal aquifer is estimated at 170 million m3/year (2010) whereas the annual sustainable yield of the aquifer within the geographical boundary of Gaza is widely quoted as 55 million m3/year. The water level is reportedly dropping by 20-30cm per year. Furthermore, due to over extraction, saltwater intrusion is also increasingly occurring because of the pressure differences between the groundwater elevation and sea water level. This has resulted in about 95% of pumped water from the aquifer is currently polluted and considered unfit for drinking purposes. The United Nations has warned that the aquifer might be unusable in 2016 and the damage will be irreversible by 2020.
It is estimated that the annual amount of water pumped from the coastal aquifer in Gaza is about twice that of natural replenishment. In 1990, the total available freshwater in Gaza was 57 million cubic metres, whereas today it is only 35 million cubic metres. The rate of depletion of available freshwater in Gaza is expected to intensify as a consequence of climate change, due to expected decrease in precipitation and increase in evaporation as well as increased incidences of extreme weather phenomena, including droughts and heat waves.
Apart from salt water intrusion, sewage is one of the biggest causes of groundwater contamination in the Gaza Strip. High levels of total and faecal coliform counts have been found in water samples collected from groundwater wells, particularly surrounding the wastewater treatment pond. Several parameters are far over the limits recommended by the WHO and the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) Guidelines. For example, the WHO guidelines for drinking-water quality for chloride levels specify a maximum limit of 250 Cl mg/l compared to the PWA Guidelines, which specify a maximum recommended limit of 600 Cl mg/l. The average Cl levels observed in wells vary from 50 mg/l to 11476 mg/l, which is far over the recommended maximum in both sets of guidelines. Similarly, the WHO guidelines for nitrate levels recommend a maximum of 50 mg/l, compared to the PWA Guidelines, which recommend a maximum of 70 mg/l. The average nitrate levels observed in Gaza wells ranges from 8 mg/l to 528 mg/l, also over the recommended limits from both guidelines.
In addition to being of poor quality, groundwater provided through the municipal infrastructure is scarce. As of September 2011, the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Group of the Palestinian Territories reports that although 98% of Gaza’s residents are connected to the water network, only 48% of household have running water four to seven days a week. The daily water consumption per capita in the Gaza strip is about 80 ‐ 90 litres, which is less than the minimum value (100 ‐ 150 litters) recommended by WHO.
In order to address the increasing salinity in the water supply, the Palestinian Authorities have pursued desalination as a means of increasing the amount of potable water available. Desalinated water is obtained through different sources: there are seven public desalination facilities run by the CMWU, In addition there are at least 40 small scale private plants and more than 20,000 reverse osmosis (RO) housing units, which are often unregulated. A substantial proportion of the Gaza population obtains drinking water from unregulated sellers of desalinated water.
Drinking water from desalination plants is sold on the market by water tankers. As much as 83% of the population use water from tanker cars as the primary household water source. According to a water quality monitoring campaign conducted in 2009, the water from desalination plants is good. However, due to a non-hygienic handling of the water in distribution (e.g. lack of cleaning and chlorination of transport water tanks, contamination of the nozzle on water transport tanks, contamination of customer transport containers, lack of cleaning of home storage tanks and unhygienic handling in homes before drinking), bacteriological contamination has been detected in samples taken from distribution points and in samples taken from household storage tanks.
The price of one cubic meter of desalinated water from private service providers is however approximately 50 NIS (appr. 13 USD), which is about ten times that of the grid water provided by CMWU. Due to the high level of poverty and unemployment, many people cannot afford this high price of clean water. Therefore, many are forced to use polluted water exposing themselves to diseases. According to the Palestinian water authority about 40% of disease incidence cases in the Gaza strip are related to polluted drinking water. Diarrhoea is one of these diseases which cause, according to a UN study in 2009, about 12% of the children deaths in the Gaza strip. Furthermore, it has been estimated that more than half of all children in Gaza aged 6–36 months suffer from anaemia, some of which may be associated with exceptionally high instances of nitrates in the water.
Rainwater in winter is considered a secondary source of water in Gaza, especially for agricultural purposes. The annual average amount of precipitation in Gaza is however low (317 mm/year) due to the location of the Gaza strip in the semi‐arid zone. In spite of the great need for water, rainwater is not efficiently utilized by the private or public sector. A common wrong practice is to drain rainwater into the sewage water drainage system. This practice coupled with the increased urban built areas has led to increase the amount of reusable rainwater that is lost.
The harvesting of rainwater, commonly practiced in the West Bank is not generally conducted by private households in Gaza. Analyses of storm water runoff collected from rooftops suggest that this water source has low concentrations of chloride and nitrate and the water quality is close to the limits set by WHO for drinking purposes. A 2008 study found that residents of Gaza are willing to adopt on-site rooftop rainwater filtration in urban areas where free land is available, but financial incentives from local authorities would be necessary to make this alternative more attractive. There are two types of rainwater collecting tanks: underground tanks and tanks applied above the ground. Underground residential rainwater tanks are usually made of reinforced concrete, and not generally applied in Gaza. In addition to the fact that, they need free land adjacent to the building to be constructed, which is in limited supply in Gaza, they are also very expensive. Above‐the‐ground rainwater tanks are usually made locally of plastic, and are considerably more common than underground tanks, primarily due to the lower costs. In addition to tanks, either underground or above the ground, rainwater collection systems generally also require pumps .
SANITATION
About 60% of households in the Gaza strip are connected to a sewage network, whereas the rest usually apply leaky cesspits or empty raw sewage directly into the environment.
There are four treatment plants currently operational in the north, Gaza, Khan Younis and Rafah provinces. They are designed to treat collected sewage water to the level allowed for discharge in theMediterranean Sea. However, the treatment plants do not work efficiently, due to the shortage of spare parts and materials required to repair them. Additionally, the increased growth of population exceeding the expansion of treatment plants has resulted in plants operating beyond their designed capacity. As a result, a significant amount of sewage water is poured into lagoons, wadis and the sea without proper treatment.
Reusing greywater collected from washing basins, baths and washers is also widely considered as one of the main strategies to reduce potable water consumptions in buildings. It is estimated that about 60% of consumed water by a typical household is turned into greywater. According to a study carried out in Israel, reusing greywater results in saving up to 30% of potable water consumption in a residential building. There are various methods of greywater recycling that differ in terms of complexity depending on the final use of water and available technology. Usually, in rural areas and developing countries, low technology or natural systems, which mainly depend on slow sand filtration, are used. Such systems can be established locally using available building materials and techniques.
Innovative solutions are severely required to provide people with clean and safe water and to treat sewage water in environmentally friendly ways. Therefore, sustainable use of existing water resources and reuse of sewage water should be given special considerations also in the construction and building sector in Gaza.
CONCLUSIONS
No conclusions can be made, apart from the obvious consideration that this tiny slice of land, which is completely dependent on external resources, is rapidly becoming a desert, unlivable place. Which would be a terrifying perspective in itself, but the situation is even worsened by the fact that the hundreds of thousands of people living here are not allowed to decide to move if things get too hard. They’ll have to stay here, no matter what happens to their sources of water, and of course this raises a crucial and urgent question within the international community: when will we all start to really do something about it?
Erika Trabucco_FAREstudio /HANDICAP INTERNATIONAL
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