By Jamal Adel.
Tripoli, 4 February 2014:
A farmer stealing water from the Man-Made River has added to the misery of people in . . .[restrict]the east, by causing a high-pressure leak that engineers are struggling to fix.
Flows of water to Benghazi and other eastern cities have already been disrupted by the closure of the Sarir power station, which cut power to the pipeline’s pumps in the south. Benghazi’s supply has dropped from 280,000 to 170,000 litres a day. The city is having to make up the shortfall by tapping the agricultural reserves in the Omar Al-Mukhtar reservoir to its east.
According to the Man-Made River Authority, water began gushing uncontrollably last night from a leak in the line at a farm 10 kilometres north of Ajdabiya toward Zuetina. Supplies to both towns were hit as engineers tried to lower the pressure elsewhere in the pipeline, so that they could bring leak under control. Operations and Maintenance manager Sami Al-Jahani told the Libya Herald that the job of the engineers was made more difficult by the flooding around the pipeline which the theft had caused.
Jahani said this evening that the leak had not yet been stemmed. He said that he was not yet in a position to estimate how much water had been lost so far.
Water shortages from Benghazi to Sirte have been occurring over ten days following clashes in the south which shut Sarir power station. With reduced power, the MMR has been able to function at only a fraction of its capacity. There have been reports that unless Sarir power station reopens, water supplies for Benghazi and Sirte will have run out by Thursday. [/restrict]
