10K cubic meters of water collected from Saint Catherine floods

CAIRO - 2 September 2018: The floods, which hit Egypt’s Saint Catherine over the past two days, resulted in the accumulation of around 10,000 cubic meters of floodwater, said the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation.

The floods hit areas of al-Nabi Saleh and al-Ismabiya of South Sinai’s Saint Catherine, filling man-made lakes in the mountainous places with around 10,000 cubic meters of rainwater, said the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation in a statement on Sunday.

It is the first flood wave Egypt witnesses this year, according to the statement of Egyptian Meteorological Authority (EMA) on Friday.

Last month, the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, in cooperation with the South Sinai governor, inaugurated a project of building a cement barrier to push floodwater into a man-made lake in al-Ismabiya to save city houses from flood risks.

Over the past two years, the government built a number of lakes and barriers to protect South Sinai, especially Taba, from flood risks. In 2014, several hotels in Taba drowned by floods.

The following video footage shows floods that hit Taba heights hotel in 2014.



South Sinai has a total of 150 barriers to protect the governorate from the seasonal floods, said former spokesperson of the Ministry Hossam el-Imam in a talk show in al-Hayat channel in April 2018.

Egypt suffers from a water deficit of 21 billion cubic meters annually and imports a total of 34 billion cubic meters of water annually in food products to achieve food security. Egypt’s consumption reached 110 billion cubic meters, while it currently has 60 million cubic meters annually, said Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Abdel Aati in previous statements.

Egypt’s water situation is very critical and rare as most of its land is desert, Adel Aati said during Tajikistan-held high-level International Conference on International Decade for Action “Water For Sustainable Development,” 2018-2020 in June.

It is expected that the water share per capita would drop to 500 cubic meters annually by 2025 amid the rapid deterioration of water and underground water quality, he said. Egypt’s water share per capita declined by 60 percent since 1970, reaching 663 cubic meters, in accordance with the 2014 report issued by the state-owned Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS).

Additional reporting by Samar Samir