Kuwait running out of water: Desalination capabilities not keeping up with consumption
Published: Sep 9, 2010 00:03 Updated: Sep 9, 2010 00:03
KUWAIT CITY: Kuwaitis are consuming almost more water than the country can produce.
An estimated 1.5 million cubic meters of water was being consumed daily in Kuwait, dangerously close to country’s maximum production capacity, the business news site Arabian Business reported.
According to the report Kuwait, which produces nearly all of its water from desalination plants, produces just 1.51 million cubic meters of water a year. The Gulf state, like its neighbors in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, has all but depleted their fresh waters supplies and depend heavily on desalinated seawater to meet the demands of their growing populations.
The Kuwaiti Ministry of Electricity and Water has plans to add an additional 150,000 cubic meters daily this coming year, about a 10 percent increase in daily production. Even this was not expected to be enough to keep up with the population growth and higher water demands. More capabilities were needed to meet demands in 2012 and 2013.
Kuwaitis say that the government has been encouraging people to cut back on their consumption in commercial on TV and in newspapers.
“The rate in the increase in urban water consumption in Kuwait, as well as in most of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, is relatively high if compared to other parts of the world. And it is rather escalating in some of the GCC,” professor Waleed Al-Zubari of the Department of Water Resources Management, Arabian Gulf University in Bahrain, told The Media Line.
“Domestic water use in all GCC countries increased from around 2.8 billion m3 to 5.1 billion m3 during 1990-2000, and is expected to reach more than 8.5 billion m3 in the year 2025 if the current trend continues,” Al-Zubari said.
“This is due to the rapid increase in the population as well as to a change in the consumption patterns of the consumers,” he said. “Another contributing factor to the rapid increase in domestic water consumption could be the increase in the Unaccounted-For-Water (UFW), which are essentially leaks in the water distributing system. These are expected to increase due to the ageing of the pipes infrastructure.”
One long-term consequence of heavy desalination is that the salt residual, sometimes referred to as brine, that is separated from the water during the purification process is discharged back into the sea adding to the already existing salinity of the water.
“First, all types of water in the Gulf are very salty, even the Arabian Gulf water is much saltier than open water or ocean water. This is due to weather condition and very low circulation of the Arabian Gulf water,” Mohammed A. Raouf, program Manager of Environmental Research at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, told The Media Line.
The entrance to the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, is very narrow limiting the inflow of less saline seawater from the Indian Ocean. “The over-extraction of groundwater beyond safe levels has caused the existing problem,” Raouf said.
He added that the little water there was in the aquifers, which have always been brackish, were much saltier now.
The existing desalination plants in Kuwait are owned and operated by the Ministry of Electricity and Water and some local analysts believe that the market should be privatized to boost efficiency. On the other hand, the Gulf based newswire Zawya was reporting that officials in the ministry were concerned about their lack of influence on tenders for new construction problems that have been issued.
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Nov 10, 2010 09:30
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