According to a Saudi agricultural engineer, a vast portion of the estimated two billion cubic meters of rainwater that falls in the Kingdom every year is lost or wasted as a result of poor storage conditions. Had we known how best to utilize this precious commodity, we would have saved a great deal of time, energy and money spent on seeking water for drinking and irrigation.
The engineer blamed the concrete dams built along wadis in various parts of the Kingdom. According to him, the dams have cost the state billions of riyals and have failed to produce the desired results. With the passage of time, layers of silt have formed in the dams which have prevented the water from naturally penetrating the soil and going underground to feed the numerous wells in the surrounding areas. The result is that we experience a very high rate of evaporation leading to the loss of huge amounts of water that could have been used to irrigate crops and provide drinking water for animals.
The engineer explained that instead of blindly copying outsiders with an inefficient system of water storage, we could have benefited from the experience of our ancestors who used a simple and efficient system for storing rainwater. Traditional techniques have been very successful in the past especially in areas with relatively high levels of precipitation. Locally designed dams and reservoirs dating back more than a thousand years are still operating successfully in many areas.
The engineer raised the question of why people do not learn from past experiences that have provided solutions to local problems. Simple and less costly traditional methods should have been used instead of so many concrete dams built at great cost and which then require continuous and expensive maintenance and still produce modest results, the engineer argued.
Many researchers and engineers have raised similar questions in the past and called for blending traditional practices with modern technology in order to achieve the desired results. As usual, however, no one listened and no one seemed interested in doing anything.
Arab News From the Local Press 21 October 2003
