As it does every summer, a water crisis has started to impact on the villagers of Egypt’s Dakahlia governorate. This year things have been so bad that there have been demonstrations in front of the governorate’s headquarters and in front of water tanks belonging to the Dakahlia Water Company, or DWC.

Around 30,000 people have been suffering from the disruption in drinking water for more than two months in the villages of Safih and Hawis, near the city of Mansoura, in the governorate.

As it does every summer, a water crisis has started to impact on the villagers of Egypt’s Dakahlia governorate. This year things have been so bad that there have been demonstrations in front of the governorate’s headquarters and in front of water tanks belonging to the Dakahlia Water Company, or DWC.

Around 30,000 people have been suffering from the disruption in drinking water for more than two months in the villages of Safih and Hawis, near the city of Mansoura, in the governorate.

“The water crisis started just a few days before Ramadan,” says Mahmoud Ibrahim, a Hawis local. “The villagers cannot find water to drink, to bathe in or for any personal uses. Water stations lack maintenance and the village is neglected on the pretext that it is a slum area. Even water mixed with sewage no longer comes to the village!”

“We rely on the DWC water tanks as well as on the canal,” says Fatima Othman, a local from nearby Safih. “Every day, people crowd the entrance to the village at 10am, waiting for the tanker. But the tanker contains no more than 4,000 liters of water – that’s not enough for 30,000 people – so quarrels start. We also use the canal water for washing dishes and clothes and bathing the children.”

No legal connections

The head engineer at the DWC, Izzat Sayad, says there are several reasons for this crisis. It is because these villages are located at the end of the water network that only a little bit of water reaches them. The DWC is also under pressure to connect networks further and expand operations at water pumping stations. Other villages are also affected, he says, including Meet Salseel and Gamalia near the city of Manzala.

Once the new water pumping station at Moniat Nasr is open next March, the crisis in the Manzala area will be resolved, Sayad explains. The problems faced by the Mansoura villages will be solved with the expansion of the water pumping station in Meet Khamis.

There are other reasons for the crisis too. “Safih was established in 1979 and affiliated with Mansoura in 1985,” notes local man, Ibrahim Qattan. “In 2005, millions were allocated for the development of water and sewage projects. However many people still remove their own wastewater or pay others to do it. Those who cannot, just leave the wastewater outside their houses. But when we complained about this, government officials told us that Safih was not included in the planned projects for the governorate.”

Sayad also says that as housing has built up in the slum areas, more pressure comes on the water network. Only two or three houses in Safih and Hawis are legally connected to the water network, he says. The others are connected but illegally. To solve this in the short term, the DWC plans to bring water to the villages by tanker.

Unhealthy ground water

Meanwhile in the villages of Shawareb and Gummeza Balguy, around 5,000 people have resorted to using water pumps to extract ground water for their washing and cooking.

“Every day at 9am, people with containers gather on carts heading to the village of Tess’een, about two kilometers away,” says one local, Ibrahim Rizq. “There we fill our containers with drinking water from a public fountain. As for bathing and washing, we use the groundwater pumped out by pumps.”

This is not a good idea, says Ali Mnilawy, a gastroenterologist and hepatologist based in Mansoura. The groundwater here is basically untreated industrial and agricultural wastewater or Nile water mixed with fertilizers and a large proportion of harmful substances leeched out of the soil. It can cause renal failure, gout and bacterial poisoning.

The deeper a pump goes, says Mnilawy, the healthier the water would be. Ideally the safest depth is at least at 30 meters because water at this depth is more filtered. However the majority of the existing pumps in the villages only go down 15 meters.