96% of Gaza's water unfit for use

Some 96 per cent of Gaza’s underground water is unusable as it does not comply with global standards, the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) said yesterday.

In a statement, the PWA said that the water situation in the Strip is continuously deteriorating as a result of the limited capacity of underground reserves.

“The reserves receive around 60 million cubic metres each year compared to 200 million cubic metres used at the same time,” the PWA statement said.

The statement also said that the use of three or four times more water than that supplied led to the increase of water salinity as well as to the pollution caused by the leakage of waste water to the aquifers.