(Writing by Farsi al-Rifai- Translation by Dani Murad)
(Eqtsad)- A water crisis in the horizon, as Euphrates water has been witnessing an unprecedented deterioration in the last few months, especially after the Turks cut off the river’s flow from the Syrian territories at the beginning of May 2013, which continued for six days and almost caused a water catastrophe until Turkey re-pumped the water again.
This year, and with the beginning of May, the gradual pumping has decreased to the half then stopped completely, to the extent that not even a drop of water entered the Syrian territories.
Lawyer Alaa Al Sayed raised the alarm regarding this water crisis, and posted on his Facebook page information about the river’s dams and its lakes.
According to Al Sayed, Tishrin Dam is the first dam to receive Euphrates water in the Syrian territories, and then comes the dam’s lake which has a length of 80 km, and an approximate width of 8 km and a capacity of 11.6 billion cubic meters of water.
Then Al Khafsa station, a water pumping facility that pumps water from the lake through pipes to Aleppo and its suburbs.
Al Baath Dam, Another dam on the Euphrates, located 22 kilometers (14 mi) upstream from the city of Ar-Raqqah.
As a result of this severe water decline, the turbines that generate electricity in Tishren’s Dam stopped, and thus led to electricity blackout.
According to Al Sayed, the overall level of water in the lake also decreased to reach six meters from the normal level, which is a drastic drop and a huge loss of water inventory, if we consider that each decrease is 1 cm from of the entire lake.
Al Sayed predicted that due to the decrease in lake’s water, Khafsa station will not be able to draw water and pump it through the pipes, especially after the stagnation in the lake led to an increase in water’s microorganisms and pollution.
Aleppo and its suburbs will be totally deprived from the water supply in case the pumping continued in Euphrates dam to generate electricity, which will increase the decline more, and once it reaches seven meters, the dam will be permanently out of service.
Alaa Al Sayed, a specialist in Aleppo’s water and its irrigation, believes that the ambulatory solution to the river’s deteriorating situation, is by closing all dam’s gates to preserve its reservoir, so that Al Khafsa station can continue its work to pump water to Aleppo, and he sees that this might lead to electricity outage on large parts of areas surrounding the dam.
To rectify the matter, the initiative of “Aleppo’s people” has made great efforts to reactivate a deal to run the thermal power station at the request of the dominant entity on the station, and if this agreement is activated, the station will fill the gap of electricity outage due to suspension of Turbines, after it witnessed the water situation in the Euphrates River, according to Al Sayed
On the other hand, Al Sayed considered Turkey’s attempt to deprive Syria from its share of Euphrates water as well as Iraq, a flagrant violation of international water treaties governing the quotas of neighboring states that share international rivers, and that the continuation of this will lead to a humanitarian, environmental, agricultural and animal disasters for all areas that rely on the Euphrates River in Syria and Iraq.
Al sayed demanded all the countries, and international organizations to put more pressure on the Turkish government to give back Syria’s quota of Euphrates water in order to avoid a potential unprecedented disaster.
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