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Haiti: Water management and difficulties of supply
April 2000

Fritznel Octave, Radio Voice of the Far West, Port-de-Paix, Haiti

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In many countries, for instance those of the Arab world, the question of water is crucial and generates multiple conflicts. In Haiti, the major problem is water management for a population that keeps growing in the cities as well as in rural zones, where the need of water for agriculture is ever increasing.

From now on, the Arab world is in conquest for this rare commodity and remains uneasy in view of its scarcity and the aggravation of the drought. In the beginning of March 1999, at the time of his visit to Egypt, the Libyan leader Mouammar Kadhafi affirmed that "the next wars will break out over water."

The United Nations have repeatedly explained that disputes over water are increasing steadily and can be a source for serious conflicts between competing countries. In Jordan, for example, water problems are now most pressing. Concern due to the drought worsened when Israel announced on 14 March 1999 that it would not be able to provide Amman that year with the 50 million m3 of water, as was foreseen by the Peace Accord of 1994.

Israel wants to reduce its water supply to Jordan in proportion to the shortage. This could lead to a limitation by 60%. Moreover, Israeli authorities have already reduced by 25% the water provided to their own agriculture, and consider to bring this reduction up to 40%.

Meanwhile, the Jordanian government said that it's ready to fight for each m3 of water that is due to them. The parliament declared that "the water of Jordan is a right and not a donation or a favour by Israel, which thinks that it can use the water as it wishes."

Iran's population is also threatened with shortage and a crisis committee has been formed. Furthermore, the conflict between Turkey, Iraq and Syria perfectly demonstrates the problems of shared water resources, as brought forward in many international conferences.

Iraq and Syria have accused Turkey of retaining the water of the Euphrates by constructing dams on the river within the scope of a big irrigation and energy production project in the southeast of Anatolia. Iraq has responded by announcing the construction of a dam-reservoir with a capacity of 1.5 billion m3.

Egypt got involved in a new adventure: the development of a new valley, thanks to a canal of more than 300 kilometers long, supplied by the Assouan dam. This would expand the arable surface of the country to 25% against the existing 6%. Egypt also implements a project which aims to transform the north of the Sinai desert into a garden by routing Nile water there (the biggest river of the region).

In view of the shortage caused by drought or by water mismanagement, solutions are rare and difficult, especially in low-income countries.

Closer to us, in the Caribbean, governments view water management as part of a relatively complex activity linked to the protection and the conservation of all environmental resources. Some countries such as Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago even exercise techniques of "de-contaminating" used waters, and recycle them for achieving better rations in urban areas.

In present day Haiti, the supply of water has more and more become a dilemma for residents of urban as well as rural areas. A good number of people preoccupied by the situation think that the problem should be placed in the perspective of the actual management of the country's water resources and not in terms of scarcity or limited resources, as it is the case in other countries.

According to Pierre Adam, a Haitian hydrological engineer, a number of prospects and studies from across the country have confirmed that there are considerable water resources.

Haiti records an average of 41.2 billion m3 of rainwater per year of which 29.09 billion m3 is returned to the atmosphere through the evaporation and perspiration of the vegetation, according to information provided by the National Service of Water Resources (SNRE).

According to this same source, of the 12 billion m3 remaining, 4 billion sinks into the soil to nourish underground sources and only 1 billion of what is left is used for irrigation or water supply purposes.

The 1996 report of the World Health Organization (WHO) described the example of the national services for the provision of drinking water not meeting 50% of the needs of the population, and this in a country where in late 1997 only 3,496,865 out of its 7 million inhabitants receive drinking water.

Indeed: "This situation is not only linked to the lack of means such as necessary investments in the sectors of water exploitation and treatment, but also to the lack of resource management policies," engineer Ivelt Chéry said, Director of the National Service of Water Resources (SNRE).

Engineer Chéry stated that: "At the level of water resource exploitation, a real chaos exists in the country, due to the absence of a legal framework which would authorize one and only one institution, that is able to implement all appropriate studies, with their management and exploitation." Engineer Chéry deplored the fact that the regulations currently in force give several institutions the right to exploit the water resources across the country, although a good many of them do not have the expertise or technical means for this type of enterprise. This causes waste of water in some regions and shortages in others.

In addition to SNRE, a technical decentralized body of the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development (MARNDR), water exploitation and management companies include: the National Service of Drinking Water (SNEP), which actually only covers ten cities in the provinces; the Metropolitan Autonomous Station for Drinking Water (CAMEP), a commercial organization which covers all parts of the Port-au-Prince area; and even national and international NGOs which implement drilling and capturing activities almost anywhere throughout the country by installing reservoirs and public fountains for use by the people.

According to a technician of SNEP, in some parts of the country drilling is done anarchically, without taking the available levels of reserves into account. This in spite of the technical studies done by SNRE which provide details on this topic. Fountains are generally not well done: water runs from faucets day and night, whereas in the majority of cases one could use technical means to provide a flow which is based on need, a technician said.

Lack of water management policies weighs already heavily on the people, especially those of urban areas where the precious liquid is an important need for daily survival. The water supply in many districts of Port-au-Prince, the region with the country's strongest demographic growth (5% per year), is a real nightmare.

CAMEP can only provide 120 thousand m3 of water per day in the metropolitan area whereas, according to the latest assessments, the real water need of this population is more than 200 thousand m3 daily. In addition to its inability to bring supply and demand in balance, this organization faces serious quality problems related to technical and geo-demographic difficulties that hinder the supply of well-treated water.

With these limitations, the risks of illness increase in poor sectors of the population, as well as the private investments needed for the distribution of drinking water, water for swimming pools and reservoirs.

[1220 words]

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