Water crisis looms in Syria’s Tabqa as station goes offline
TABQA, Syria (North Press) – An official from the Tabqa Water Directorate, in northern Syria, affiliated with the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), said on Monday that one of the stations supplying the city went out of service, leading to a reliance on only one station. This presages severe water rationing of drinking water.
The decrease in the water level of the Euphrates River, due to Turkey’s continued withholding of its water since February 2020, has caused many water stations along the river to go out of service.
Hamoud al-Sheikh, the deputy head of the Tabqa Water Directorate, expressed that the al-Jarafat water station, which supplies Tabqa, is now out of service, posing a threat of failing to cover the city’s needs of drinking water to the city.
Tabqa depends on two water stations, namely al-Jarafat and al-Raisa, to supply drinking water to the city, but now it will have to rely on only one station, which could result in long hours of water cuts, according to al-Sheikh.
Previously, nine drinking water stations in the outskirts of Tabqa stopped functioning, and there is a looming threat of the al-Raisa station also becoming non-functional due to a significant decline in the water levels of the Euphrates River.
The water level of the Euphrates River has dropped by five meters recently due to Turkey’s seizure of the river’s water. The flow rate has been limited to 200 cubic meters per second, which is a serious breach of the 1987 water-sharing agreement signed with Syria and Iraq under the United Nations’ supervision.
The 1987 agreement stipulates Turkey’s permanent commitment to pumping 500 cubic meters of water per second from the Euphrates River towards Syria.
Al-Sheikh is expecting a devastating humanitarian disaster looming over the people of Tabqa city and its surrounding areas. The water level at the Euphrates Dam reservoir is approximately 50 to 60 centimeters away from reaching dead level. Beyond this stage, the dam is no longer able to operate.
In an effort to address the situation, the Water Directorate in Tabqa is actively working on digging river courses to redirect water from the Euphrates to the pumping station. They have also made an appeal to the United Nations, humanitarian organizations, and international bodies concerned to put an end to Turkey’s practices of cutting off the Euphrates water.