Assessment of Water Sector in Nablus City and Potential Development
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Date
2018
Authors
Alawneh, Aseel
Soboh, Samah
Abubaker, Farah
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Abstract
Water is life. Plants, animals and humans all depend on this invaluable natural- resource for life. In addition, water is used in moving waste, cleaning, sanitation, manufacturing, construction and farming. Almost every human activity you can think of involves some use of water.
So, we can say that the water scarcity is a very important issue that must be taken into account because it has many negative effects in many fields in our life like health, agriculture, manufacturing and more. We faced this problem in Nablus City during last summer, where shortage of water was a huge problem.
The cause of the water crisis, especially during summer was the high temperature that led to the overuse of water and the rainfall in that year was low compared to previous years which caused the level of wells to reduce. Nablus also suffers from an additional problem due to its topographic nature; the difference in levels is the reason for the difficulty of pumping from sources. Moreover, water used to reach the houses once each 10-12 days or more, so people had to buy water tanks which caused lots of complain where the price of a cubic meter of water is 50 shekels, while the price from the Municipality is about 5 shekels. Also, within 6 years no water well or reservoir has been drilled and no development has been carried out with regard to distribution or resources. The Nablus Municipality owns five main wells and six springs, and the amount of water collected from these sources is 31 thousand cubic meters per day, while the needs of Nablus City 45 thousand cubic meters per day, and the Municipality of Nablus supply 21 villages surrounding the city while the Palestinian Water Authority does not compensate Nablus Municipality in quantities supplied.
Here comes our role in this project in studying this water crisis accurately by understanding the water situation in Nablus and creating a clear image about the sources of water and its locations. The aim of this is to determine the problem in general and then go into details for a deeper understanding, in order to develop appropriate solutions.
Our methodology of work is to collect numerical data from Municipality to know amounts of water that was available in the past few years, amount pumped, and amount used by the citizens (may plot graphs to help in data analysis) and compare the reductions to realize the reasons behind them also we will make interviews with the authorized people to debate and analyze with them the scarcity of water and suggest solutions, therefore study each solution separately to test if applicable and we will visit the sites of pumps, wells and springs in Nablus City and the villages.