Morocco is going through a harsh period of drought. But recent rains in the country have more or less saved the situation, allowing the quantity recorded from September 2021 to mid-February 2022, to go from simple to double, or even more.
Speaking during a session of oral questions in the House of Councilors this Tuesday, April 12, the Minister of Equipment and Water, Nizar Baraka, detailed in this sense that the percentage of rain recorded during the month of March amounted to 6,365 mm, while the amount of precipitation from September 2021 to February 2022 did not exceed 2,976 mm.
The recent rains had a positive impact on groundwater and agriculture, which saved the agricultural season for spring crops, the minister said.
In the Kingdom, and after the delay in the rains, the rains in March are expected to save one million hectares of spring crops, which will make the current agricultural season better than expected. But according to Nizar Baraka, it will, in general, be below average.
Recent rainfall has also had a positive impact on the dams. The water reserves in all the dams of the Kingdom reached 5.532 billion cubic meters of water, on Tuesday April 12, against 5.200 billion cubic meters in February, for a total filling rate of 34.3%.
The Minister of Equipment and Water thus indicated that a third of the country’s dams exceeded 50% of the filling rate, while others reached 100%, noting that the improvement of the injection dams will contribute to solving the problem of water scarcity from which certain regions suffer. However, he noted, the average occupancy rate remains lower than that of the previous year (50.8%).
In this regard, Baraka conceded that the water crisis facing Morocco will certainly have an impact in the future. ” We must speak frankly with the Moroccans. The Kingdom will face the problem of water scarcity, and therefore a proactive approach must be taken“, he argued.
Among the measures undertaken in this direction by the government to limit the damage, there is the construction of more dams. It is expected that 127 dams will be built by 2024, in addition to the construction of some 20 seawater desalination plants by 2030.
Nizar Baraka, thus indicated that seawater desalination technology has become a good option for Morocco, due to the use of renewable energies. This makes the desalination process cheaper, he pointed out, recalling that the cost of desalination at the Dakhla plant does not exceed 2.5 dirhams per cubic meter.
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