Water Scarcity in Algeria Isabeau Galesloot

Water Scarcity in Algeria
Isabeau Galesloot

In this day and time water is extremely scarce, yet we take advantage of it. Nearly 1 billion people in the developing world do not have access to clean, safe drinking water, meanwhile we in our day to day routine waste it. 

Water scarcity can be either one of two things. The lack of the quantity of water or lack of access to safe water. In a developing country, spending time to find safe water is extremely time consuming and expensive which leads to economic scarcity. Physical scarcity is when there just isn't enough water, but economic scarcity you can find clean, safe water but its just extremely time consuming and not great for the economy.This problem isn't just going to disappear, as more people are increasing their demands, the cost and effort to build and maintain access to water will increase. Waters importance will only increase in a political and social aspect. 

In northern Algeria, in the mountainous district of Bouzeguene, there have been extreme water shortages. Bouzenguene is the central water distribution point for all the surrounding towns and villages. The pipes that link the large water tower to the surrounding villages have started to leak excessively in the mid 2000’s. This issue has slowed down the supply and has lead to a drastic reduction to the amount of water that can now be delivered to the other villages. 

During the summer in this part of the country there is extreme drought for 6 months, because of this it is very hard to fill up the water towers, people have had to improvise. The wealthier people go out to buy water tanks which they then attach to their trucks and then can fill them up at springs, but the less fortunate people fill up containers upon contains at the fountains by foot. Either way, both ways are time consuming and the process takes a long time. “’Ive bought a 1,800-litre water tank for my house. I fill it up with water from the tap when it flows every 10 days or so. Sometimes, the water starts to flow at three o’clock in the morning, so you need to get up to collect it. I leave the valve open so that the sound of the water flowing wakes me up and I don’t miss the opportunity. In addition to the water tank, I fill up everything that can hold water: tins, jerry cans, even drinking glasses! Even if I collect the equivalent of three water tanks, that’s sometimes not enough: washing yourself and cooking have become luxuries. We hardly have any water left to clean the toilets and the drains.” (Kaci, 2012) 

The water crisis in Algeria is just getting worse and worse, riots are starting to breakout, people are getting injured the government needs a plan to fix this. The rioters are setting government buildings and cars on fire, people are going to continue getting hurt and arrested until the problem is solved and the government works through the solutions they have tried to put in place years ago. 

A solution that government is working on is that they have called onto international experts to try  to increase water supplies in both urban and rural areas. The government has already put in 53 billion dinars to repair the approximately 30% of all pipelines in Algeria that leak. They started building dams and using water treatments to prevent water loss and waste. These projects were all started in the mid 2000's, and they still haven't reduced the leaking in the pipes.