Free Report On Water Supply For Libya

1. Introduction
Libya is counted amongst the driest nations throughout the world, where only their narrow coastal area gets precipitation above 100 mm annually. As a country, Libya has faced several historical challenges in terms of managing the increasing water demand as they suffer from water scarcity. Apart from the deficiencies in water supply, there have been instances reported for pollution in the water supply. It is apparent that water scarcity is apparent in Libya, especially in the coastal areas which are highly populated areas that causes major pressure on environmental, economic and social levels. Within Libya, concentrated of population sprawls into many separated regions and water management policy is needed to ensure satisfactory living standards through efficient water supply for present and future generations. There are several options that can be chosen to ensure effective water supply is developed for the Libya (Aqeil, Tindall & Moran, 2012).
2. Water Supply Provisions
For years, Libya has been dependent on desalination process to provide water to their population. With growing population and limited water, Libya has had several reported cases of water deficiencies in the past. The only way for Libya to move towards healthy water supply is through purchasing water from other countries or discovering water within the political boundaries of their country. In 1953, the first signs of freshwater aquifers were found under the Libyan Desert while exploring for oil reserves. Therefore, the two main sources of water supply for Libya are the freshwater resource and the desalination project.
2.1. The Great Man-Made River Project
In the year 1953, during the oil exploration in the Southern Libyan deserts led to the unearthing of significant oil reserves and large quantities of trapped freshwater aquifers below the Libyan Desert. One of the largest Aquifer systems in the world (Nubian Sandstone) is located below the Eastern Sahara desert and some of it spans outside their political boundaries into Chad, Egypt and Sudan. The water aquifer covers a region of more than 2 million km2 and possesses around an estimated 150,000 km3 of fresh groundwater. The four aquifers discovered has estimated freshwater capacities that range between 4,800 to 20,000 km3. The majority of the water collected in these aquifers is around 38,000 to 14,000 years old and some of the water pockets are around 7,000 years old (Aqeil, Tindall & Moran, 2012). The project contains rivers that are a network of 4000 kilometers of 4 m diameter concrete pipelines that are buried under the desert sands for preventing evaporation of the limited and much needed resource.
In total there are around 500,000 sections of pipelines, 1,300 wells, 250 million m3 of excavation and 3,700 kilometers in haul roads. All materials used in the river project are manufactured locally in Libya. The project also includes creation of large reservoirs have pumping stations and storage controlling the flow of water in the Libyan cities.
After completion, the water irrigated through the water project would help in irrigating around 155,000 hectares of Libyan land. The biggest advantage of the project is probably the overall cost of the project, as it costs $25 billion in overall construction costs. In comparison, the water desalination project cost almost 10 times and there were incidents of pollution in water supply.
There is a disadvantage of the water project as the river project uses non-renewable water source and sustainability is an issue for future generations (Aqeil, Tindall & Moran, 2012; The Economist, 2011).
2.2. Desalination Project and Ground Wells
Libya is water scarce and arid country has heavily relied on water desalination plants due to its lack of rainfall and surface water. The desalination plants produce around 140,000 m3 of water on a daily basis, which is pumped into the commercial and residential areas. The desalination plant utilizes water from ground wells and eliminates impurities and salt content to make it usable for domestic and industrial use. The current ground wells are producing around 600,000 m3 of water on a daily basis that gets transferred to domestic users based in the Libyan cities (Algmati, n.d.). In comparison to the river project, desalination plants and ground wells cannot combine to produce the same amount of water for Libyan. But, desalination plants are long term-projects that are meant for the future generations of Libya, especially when the freshwater reserves of the extinguished. Every year, Libya keeps adding more desalination projects as they are at the heart of economic and social development of the country.
With a significant deficit in water supply, desalination plants were first considered in 1970s. By 2000, the total capacity of desalination plants has reached about 750,000 m3 on a daily basis. The desalination process consists of thermal purification and membrane process that ensures water is reusable for domestic use. In the year 2002, the design capacity of the desalination plants operable in Libya is around 332,930 m3 per day. The new plants are designed to increase the size of the membrane process to ensure the water delivered is more refined and safer than the past water supply of the plants. In year 2002, desalination shares in the Libyan water supply reached 1.4 percent. In addition, a plan has been in works since then to develop 13 desalination plants having total 705,000 m3/d installed capacity. The main concern with the desalination plants have been the high cost of construction and operation as water produced costs Libya around US$ 2.69/m3. Economical strategies need to be developed for reducing the production costs by taking into account every phase from the selection of site, design, maintenance and operation (Ashour & Ghubral, 2004, p. 215).
3.0 Recommendation
At present, the best option in the interest of Libya is to use river projects and maximize the potential of freshwater reserves in the country. But, it is obvious that Libya needs desalination plants and ground wells as the freshwater reserves are unsustainable and overtime they will be extinguished. From another point of view, desalination plants are very expensive for Libya to afford and they are overpaying for water resources. In comparison, river project is a cheaper option that will provide Libyans with freshwater reserves and will ensure utilization of natural resources by the Libyan people rather than outsiders. Finally, there have been significant cases of water pollution and deficiencies caused by ground wells and desalination plants and river project can single handedly provide more water to the Libyan public than these two options with lesser probabilities of polluted water. Overall, the river project is an effective short-term solution for Libya, but they need to work on improving desalination project efficiencies and volume of water they can produce to ensure the demand for water of Libyans is met.

References

Algmati., A.A. (n.d.). Water in Libya Present Future Goals & Investment Opportunities. Retrieved 1 January 2016 from, http://www.siww.com.sg/pdf/Libya.pdf
Aqeil., H, Tindall., J & Moran., E. (November 2012). Water Security and Interconnected challenges in Libya. Retrieved 1 January 2016 from, http://tinmore.com/pdf/WS121027_WaterSecurityLibya.pdf
Ashour, M. M., & Ghurbal, S. M. (2004). Economics of seawater desalination in Libya. Desalination, 165, 215-218. doi:10.1016/j.desal.2004.06.024
The Economist. (11 March 2011).Plumbing the Sahara. Retrieved 1 January 2016 from, http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/03/libyas_water_supply