Yemen's Minister of Water and Environment, Mohammed L. Al-Eryani has said 70,000 water wells have depleted or are on the verge of running out of water.
Opening the workshop of the Sana'a Underground Water Management on Tuesday to promote water related legislatures, al-Eryani, "said there are 220,000 borehole water wells in Yemen, 150,000 of which have pumps and the rest 70,000 are either with no water now or about to deplete".
According to SABA, the minister noted that all efforts to increase the reserves of Sana'a water basin are "insufficient" in view of the increasingly extravagant consumption.
Minister of State and Mayor of Sana'a Ahmed al-Kuhlani stressed the imperative of ensuring that legislatures apropos of water uses and wells drilling are put into effect. He warned that Sana'a Water Basin will continue downward until it eventually reaches the capillary fringe, simply because more water is being taken from it than is seeping down to it. "Two basins have dried up, geologists had forewarned us of that in the early 1990s though."
Desalination, he noted, is a costly service. "One cubic meter of desalinated water will end up costing $8 dollars, a charge above the budget of the average citizen."
