AMMAN —
Jordan ranks as the second water-poorest in the world, yet it fails to save
the abundant amounts of rainwater that fall in winter to avoid thirst during
its long dry summer. This past winter, the Kingdom recorded downpours reaching
79 percent of its annual rainfall average, that is approximately 6,436.3
million cubic meters. Despite this, Jordan’s Minister of Water and Irrigation
Mohammad Najjar warned that “the summer of 2022 will not be safe in terms of
water security”.
اضافة اعلان
In an attempt to benefit from rainfalls, Article
33/E of the
Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) code organizing the construction
of buildings in urban and rural areas set the conditions for obtaining building
construction permits, requiring the inclusion of rainwater harvesting
reservoirs in any residential or commercial building.
This, however, has not been implemented, and as a
result, water kept getting cut off in different parts of the Kingdom and,
often, wells slowly became merely abandoned holes in the ground.
Virtual wells
According to Bader
Al-Khatib, a contractor at a housing development company, GAM is tasked with
overseeing the implementation of the building codes as part of its cities and
villages organization and management. GAM, Khatib said, carries out field
inspections usually, ensuring that reservoirs are incorporated in the building
construction, as required.
Khatib claims that the oversight task ends when the
building is completed and delivered in line with the conditions set to obtain
the permit. Operating the reservoirs and making use of them is the
responsibility of apartment residents. Khatib attributes the failure to use
water harvesting reservoirs to the
citizens’ preference for individual water
storage tanks that are private, instead of sharing the water harvesting
reservoirs. He believes that, often, it is not possible to agree on a fair
sharing mechanism of the harvested water among the residents.
Zaid Rababa chose to operate the water harvesting
reservoir he had built in his building, hoping to make it an enticing factor
for potential buyers or tenants. He agreed with his neighbors that the largest
share of the reservoir water would go to those who reside on the ground floor,
because they need to water the green space surrounding the building. The same
applies to the residents of the top floors, since the national water
distribution system does not often reach their taps and storage tanks due to
the weak pressure and slow pumping system.
Rabab’a believes that some people in the
construction business add the water harvesting reservoir to the main
construction plans, but rarely complete building them due to the high cost
involved in the large quantities of iron and cement for insulation to prevent
leakage. The total cost of constructing a
water harvesting reservoir could
reach JD6,000 when the price of a regular rooftop tank does not exceed JD50.
‘We do not know that there is a well’
A poll conducted on 58 people had a questionnaire to determine their
level of awareness regarding water harvesting reservoirs; 74 percent of the
respondents said they were not aware that they had water harvesting reservoirs
in their buildings or that they could benefit from rainwater and 79 percent
thought that there was an opportunity to harvest the water and use it through
cleaning the rooftops and connecting the necessary infrastructure to benefit
from the reservoirs (where available). The harvested water could then be
filtered and used for drinking and irrigation purposes, especially if the
public water company supplies were interrupted in the summer months.
Water management expert Rakad Taani believes that
there is a failure to coordinate, among all concerned authorities, due to lack
of qualified inspectors and of awareness-raising campaigns or guidelines about
rationing water use in general.
Taani believes that water shortage in the Kingdom is
due not to the scarce volumes of water available only, but also to its poor
quality, which makes it unfit for human consumption.
Rainwater lost in Jordan due to evaporation reaches
a staggering 92.5 percent, while annual underground water refill does not
account for more than 3–5 percent of the total rainfall registered annually in
the Kingdom. Therefore, Taani believes there is an urgent need to activate the
system in place for rooftops water harvesting.
Water harvesting
Water harvesting entails
collecting rainwater from rooftops and transferring it to tanks above or below
the ground for domestic use after necessary basic treatment or simply boiling
it (in some cases).
Studies on water drainage from rooftops in the
Greater Amman area were conducted in 1997. According to Ta’ani, the estimates
showed that an average rooftop area of 95 square meters is usually capable of providing
an average of 16 liters of clean water per capita per day.
Taani is calling for the enforcement of existing
laws regulating the use of rainwater gathered from rooftops through specific
scientific methods under the supervision of specialists. Construction of
buildings without operating water harvesting wells should not be allowed.
The percentage of rainfall in Jordan varies across
the various regions every year. The period between December and March registers
about 80 percent of the annual rainfall in the country, with an average of more
than 8,500 million cubic meters over the total 92,000 square kilometers that
make up Jordan.
Raghad Saber lives in
Irbid with her family of
three. She used to buy water from water purification stations despite the heavy
downfalls registered annually in her region. She decided to think outside the
box to secure the necessary water for her family consumption due to her
concerns over irregular national water supply, poor cleanliness and storage
issues.
She bought two water tanks with a capacity of 2,000
liters each to place them in her yard. She asked a professional plumber to
drill two holes in the roof of the house and to install pipes leading to the
tanks. She would clean the rooftop at the beginning of every rainy season.
“Often, during January and February, when there is a
heavy cold front, I open the tanks, so they get filled with water. I place
clean cotton fabric on the openings to filter the incoming water. The tanks
fill up within a few hours usually, and as the water settles in the tank in few
days, it is ready to drink as pure water,” Saber says.
GAM spared no efforts in publicizing its
instructions for water reservoir construction. According to the director of
buildings at GAM, Ziad Abu-Orabi, green construction and water harvesting have
been highlighted in all meetings and discussions at conferences, and at the
engineers’ syndicate.
Abu-Orabi stressed that the last resort was to
penalize building owners for failing to construct and provide fully operational
harvesting reservoirs. The fine could amount to 10 percent of the cost of a
building permit fee, or a minimum penalty set at JD100.
Abu-Orabi says that the fines imposed are low in
comparison to the cost of constructing a water harvesting reservoir, which is
why many Amman inhabitants continue to suffer due to frequent water supply
interruptions and await real solutions to solve the water shortage problems in
the summer.
This article
was contributed to Jordan News by Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism
(ARIJ).
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