85k low-income rural households connected to wastewater networks at LE305M in Egypt

CAIRO – 1 November 2020: Minister of Local Development Mahmoud Shaarwy told press on Sunday that around 85,000 households located in 106 low-income villages were connected to wastewater networks at a cost worth LE305 million.

The minister did not precise the time frame in which that has been achieved. Yet, he said that the villages lie in 18 governorates, which are Giza, Qalyoubeya, Alexandria, Luxor, Qena, Beni Suef, Menoufeya, Fayoum, Sohag, Damietta, Beheira, Cairo, Suez, Ismailiyah, Kafr al-Sheikh, Menya, Sharqeya, and Asyut.

Citizens pay for such connections in installments. The value of which is LE40.

The coverage of the drinking water network and the wastewater network in Egypt is 99 percent and 65 percent, respectively. It is noted that households that are not connected to the wastewater network have internal wastewater systems that gush out randomly.

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi announced on Saturday that Egypt would inaugurate the largest wastewater treatment plant in the world within eight months.

President Sisi’s comments came during the inauguration ceremony of King Salman University in Sharm El Seikh city, besides other national projects in Sinai.

“The Egyptian state is seeking the maximum benefits from the agricultural wastewater,” President Sisi said, noting that is why the government has established the wastewater treatment plant in the Bahr al-Bakar region, in Sharqia governorate.

The cost of the Bahr al-Baqar water station is estimated approximately at 18 billion EGP, the President said, adding that the additional infrastructure works to facilitate the work activities in this region would increase the cost to 25 million EGP.

In mitigation, Egypt is building the wastewater treatment plant to face a water shortage that could affect around 0.5 million people in Sinai.

The plant will treat sewage and agricultural wastewater of the longest drain (Bahr al-Baqar 1 drain). 

The 106-kilometer drain of Bahr al-Baqar starts from Dakahlia governorate to Sharqia, Ismailia to the last governorate of Port Said along the Mediterranean Sea; the longest part is located in Sharqia governorate. The drain was established in 1914 for only agricultural wastewater and was named Bahr al Baqar (means in English as the Sea of the Cow due to an accident when a herd of cows drowned in it.)

In the 1970s, the Egyptian government decided to change the drain to receive all kinds of wastewater (industrial and sewage), turning it into “a source of pollution,” according to a 2015 study conducted by environmentalist Mamdouh Salem Seraj on the drain’s negative impacts on human health and Lake Manzala in the period between 1914 and 2014.