Photo by: AFP

During winter, bad weathered roads cause terrible road jams and damage public roads. Moreover, there's the personal discomfort but also the quantity of wasted water (50% according to experts) which leaves the observer so confused. It is urgent to find solutions to this waste and plan the recovery and the storage of rain water: Lebanon is perhaps known to be the water palace in its entourage, but the rainfalls that it witnesses are divided in a wrong way on its territory.
Around half of the Lebanese territory is subject to a more or less imminent danger of desertification, according to a recent study financed by the regional bureau of Heïnrich Böll Foundation, located in Beirut. The descendant rainfall curve (knowing that rainfalls were lower than the average for the second consecutive year) doesn’t foresee any positive thing. Not to mention that the increase of the surface, asphalted and constructed in the country, hinders the seasonal realimentation of the groundwater, the main hydraulic richness in Lebanon.

A fair distribution of drinking water to the houses, the farmers, and the industries has always been a brain teaser, a challenge that no government could face. Meanwhile, the waste is at its peak: according to the HB Foundation studies, out of an average of 8 600 million cubic meters of rain water, around 4 300 million are wasted between evaporation and infiltration in the ground, and more than 880 million end up in the sea; and if we take into consideration the water that flows in other countries (Lebanon includes numerous international rivers), 2 600 million cubic meters, from which we don’t completely benefit, will only remain, in other words not more than 30% of the total annual rainfalls will be available. Yet, the needs are increasing in an exponential way: just for households, this need should surpass 280 million cubic meters per year (data of 2000) to reach around 900 million in 2015 (therefore, the total need will reach 2 840 million per year).