Gaza City – Water in the Gaza Strip is unbelievable and overloaded with health hazards.
Large-scale deforestation plants, funded by international donors and private businesses struggling to alleviate the crisis, are on full swing in the besieged Palestinian enclave. But a new high-tech effort is coming from an unlikely source: an Israel-based company.
Israel’s 14-year embargo has exacerbated the water disaster facing Gaza residents, with key materials and equipment needed to extract drinking water from coastal circulation.
A Russian-Israeli billionaire – shocked by images of children filling water in plastic containers from a street vendor – decided to take action.
Billionaire businessman Michael Mirilashvili owns a company called Watergen, which produces clean drinking water from the air through solar power technology.
Israeli-based company Mirilashvili brought three machines to Gaza after seeing the plight of its Palestinian neighbors.
He told Al Jazeera that the drinking water crisis in Gaza had affected him personally. “We want every child there to have access to the best drinking water,” he said.
The project is no longer close to meeting the water demand for Gaza’s two million residents, but “can help in the long run to solve the water problem,” said Fathi Sheikh-Khalil. manager of the Gaza Damor branch of the Palestinian NGO for Community Development, which helped bring two of the water generators to the area.
Palestinian girl fills vessel with water from public tap in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza [Mohammed Salem/Reuters]
Hydropower is Gaza’s main source of water, but the World Bank warned last year that 97 percent of groundwater is non-drinking. Excessive use of the rainwater has allowed seawater, which was largely polluted with partially or not treated sewage over the years, to enter the groundwater, rising levels of both salinity and pollution.
Very few affluent residents rely on imported bottled water and the middle-class kitchens have declining water purifiers. But with half the population, a million people, living below the poverty line, the only solution left was to buy water from trucks that were touring the Gaza Strip all day. However, two – thirds of this water is already contaminated when it is delivered, according to the United Nations children ‘s organization UNICEF.
Gaza needs more than 200 million cubic meters of water every year. Experts see stagnant seawater as the most feasible solution. Three deforestation plants funded by the international community, including the UN and the European Union, produce approximately 13 million cubic meters of water annually . The most ambitious project is to build a centralized decentralization facility with a capacity of 55 million cubic meters in the coming year.
A major power shortage that has manifested itself in Gaza over the past 14 years has been a major obstacle to resolving the water crisis. For all incineration plants, a solar-powered farm must be built.
But Watergen generators can run on either electricity from local grids or solar energy.
The high-tech machines suck air and clean it before sending it to a condensing chamber where the smoke is processed into drinking water. The water is taken out of the machine through a tap with the option to be cold or hot.
The units – each costing about $ 61,000 – were delivered to Gaza by Watergen after he persuaded Israeli authorities to let them pass. Two models have the capacity to extract 800 liters of pure water per day, while a larger one installed can generate 5,000-6,000 liters per day.
The largest water generator in the city of Khan Yunis is being tested and is connected to solar panels “to reduce the dependence on electricity and thus reduce costs”, Sheikh-Khalil said.
Khan Yunis district placed the blue cube-shaped box outside its building, serving visitors to a nearby park, clinic, and police station. The machine is “a promising technology and has a future because the machine provides you with water without anything”, said Mahmoud al-Qudra, an official in the town hall.
Unfortunately, the solar panels can only keep the appliances running for five hours each day.
Another unit was set up at the top of a pediatric hospital in Gaza City last summer, donated by the American charity Palestine Children’s Relief Fund for the children’s cancer ward.
Dr. Muhammad Abu Nada, head of the oncology department at Al-Rantisi Hospital, said his patients need clean water “with beneficial sodium for the body.” However, the machine does not run continuously as it relies on unreliable utility power.
Most vehicles receive electricity for eight hours a day, with long cuts because the single power plant in the area and power purchased directly from Israel does not meet the demand of the a fast-growing population.
The embargo, the split between Gaza controlled by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, and again conflict with Israel hampered efforts to renew power in Gaza.
Watergen’s technology in Gaza is therefore under constant evaluation for efficiency, cost, power and feasibility.
“In the trial period, we will have full knowledge about the feasibility and cost of using machines in Gaza,” Sheikh-Khalil said. “We won’t be able to operate the machine during the day.”
Mirilashvili said he was positive about giving Gaza more machines as he saw people drinking clean water from his company’s machines “touching him hard”.
“This goal [providing potable water] applies to the whole world, but we feel particularly fond of the Gaza Strip because our neighbors are there, ”he said.
With only a few machines operating in Gaza, Watergen is far from meeting demand for the two million people living in the rugged coastline. [Emmanuel Dunand/AFP]