BEIRUT: Already plagued by electricity problems, the Lebanese are now struggling with another,  equally serious problem: water shortage.

“We rarely receive the municipality’s water,” shouted Khalid Darhani, a resident of Al-Kobbeh in Tripoli, who, like others in his area, is suffering from a shortage of water at his home. “Even when we are supplied with water, it is contaminated and we cannot use it for drinking or cooking,” he said.

While Lebanon has an abundance of rainfall and underground water, for years it has struggled to distribute this water and prevent it from becoming contaminated. Mismanagement of water resources is widely considered to be one of the main problems with the water system in the country, with inadequate distribution and the severe damage to the water system caused by the July 2006 war on Lebanon further exacerbating the crisis.

A serious water shortage in Lebanon would not only mean residents would struggle to meet their daily water needs, but also that the quality of the water would be adversely affected. “I am paying $45 every two months to change the filters I use for treating polluted water,” said Darhani.

The supply of contaminated water by the municipality is also imposing an additional economic burden on families who are forced to buy water for  drinking and household use. “I cannot rely on the municipality’s water even after cleaning it because it rarely comes anyway, so I have to buy bottled water and pay LL15,000 daily for that purpose,” said Darhani, who is a fruits street merchant and father of four children.

Darhani, like many others, is no longer able to afford two bills. “I am paying for the municipality’s water and the bottled one at the same time which is way too much,” he said.

For many years, households across Lebanon have received water from public water authorities three times a week at the most.

The rest of the time, groundwater is usually pumped into buildings, including hospitals and schools. However, in some cases and for some citizens even this is not available. “We don’t have enough wells in our area,” said Darhani adding that when he tries to call the municipality in order to complain all he gets is an answering machine.

Another citizen from Tripoli living in Al-Minah complained about the lack of sufficient water in his area, saying that he goes every two days to Zgharta to buy it. “We only receive the municipality’s water every now and then but we rarely use it because it is polluted,” said Houssam Ayash. Ayash is an owner of a stones shop and buys water for his shop and house. “I am using filters to clean the water at my house but even when doing so my family and I never use it for drinking and cooking,” he added. He said he uses groundwater for cleaning his shop only because it is salty and he therefore unusable for any other purpose.

Meanwhile, a source close to the municipality of Tripoli denied citizens’ complaints, and said Tripoli is the only area which has a water supply 24 hours a day. “The water is not polluted either and the last contamination incident took place in 2005,” the source said. He added, however, that the shortage in electricity affects the availability of water in the upper floors of buildings meaning water needs time to reach them, unlike ground floors.

His arguments were echoed by an official in the water department in the southern suburbs of Dahiyeh, who said Sidon had suffered from water shortage during the past month due to the shortage of electricity and of fuel used in operating generators for the pumping of water. “We used to use these generators only in cases where the electricity was totally out in order to save fuel, and this is why water was scarce during the past month,” he said. However, he added, water supply in Sidon had gone back to normal for the time being.

He also added that people living in upper floors used pumps in order to be able to suck water from the ground to reservoirs. Manal Youssef, a housewife living in Sidon, said that when water was disrupted in the past month she would buy bottled water for domestic use.

Residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs also complain about contaminated water supply. Dounia Mokdad, a Dahiyeh resident, said the municipality’s water comes only once every two days and it is unclean. “It has a bad taste and cannot be used for drinking,” she said. “We only use it to wash our clothes.”

The situation is so dire that last year experts warned Lebanon could run out of water by 2015 if current trends were not reversed.

Moreover, experts predict that domestic water consumption will rise from 215 liters in 2000 to over 260 liters by 2015. Increased demand, coupled with a predicted population rise to 7.6 million by 2025 could increase water demand by over 80 percent in the next 15 years.