{"id":367204,"date":"2021-11-15T12:40:01","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T09:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/drought-overpumping-cut-morocco-river-link-to-sea\/"},"modified":"2021-11-15T12:40:01","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T09:40:01","slug":"drought-overpumping-cut-morocco-river-link-to-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/drought-overpumping-cut-morocco-river-link-to-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"#Drought, overpumping cut Morocco river link to sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Drought, overpumping cut Morocco river link to sea<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\n \"Moroccan
\n Moroccan ecologist Mohamed Benata holds a handful of clay that has turned to sand due to a large presence of salt in the land since the water of the sea enters in the river of Moulouya near the city of Saidia in northeastern Morocco.
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Moroccan environmentalist Mohamed Benata stood taking photos of what should be the mouth of the Moulouya river\u2014but after years of drought and over-pumping, it comes to a halt just short of the sea.<\/p>\n

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One of the longest rivers in the North African kingdom and a vital lifeline for farmers in the area near the Algerian border, the final few paces of the 500-kilometre (310-mile) waterway are now separated from the Mediterranean by a sandbar.<\/p>\n

“It’s the first time ever that the Moulouya has stopped flowing into the sea,” said Benata, a retired agronomist.<\/p>\n

“The flow has been weakened by over-pumping of the water. It’s pretty dramatic.”<\/p>\n

And as the fresh water of the river recedes, salty seawater is creeping up the groundwaters around the riverbed, spelling ruin for farmers as much as 15 kilometres inland.<\/p>\n

Outside the village of Karbacha, Ahmed Hedaoui farms several parched fields, but this year his melons are pale, yellow and deformed.<\/p>\n

“Even the wild boar don’t want them,” said the 46-year-old, wearing a baseball cap against the autumn sun.<\/p>\n

“This year, I invested almost 300,000 dirhams (around $34,000) to improve this soil. I installed two pumps to irrigate the melons, but I’ve got nothing to show for it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Everything’s dead because there’s hardly any rain and the river is salty.”<\/p>\n

Disaster for wildlife<\/b><\/p>\n

Seawater can hold up to 35 grammes of salt per litre, while freshwater usually has less than half a gramme\u2014but the brackish riverwater here contains as much as seven grammes.<\/p>\n

That has spelled disaster for wildlife in the area, according to Benata.<\/p>\n

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\n \"Farmers
\n Farmers stand together by Moulouya river bank near the city of Saidia in northeast Morocco.
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“The flora and fauna won’t get away unscathed,” he said.<\/p>\n

Salt seeping into the soil is an existential threat for Hedaoui’s cousin Mustapha, who is struggling to grow artichokes in a nearby field.<\/p>\n

Mustapha was a French teacher who turned to farming, but because of water shortages, today he only farms around a third of his 57 hectares (140 acres).<\/p>\n

“It’s been two months now since this field was irrigated with freshwater,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We don’t use the riverwater because the salt destroys the soil for years.”<\/p>\n

What was the mouth of the river is now also filling up with rubbish, spoiling one of the richest natural reserves in the area.<\/p>\n

Hedaoui, like several other farmers AFP interviewed in the area, blamed “bad water management” and an excess of infrastructure, including two pumping stations and three dams along the river.<\/p>\n

The second pumping station, which started six months ago in the nearby town of Zaio, can in theory irrigate 30,000 hectares of farmland.<\/p>\n

But for Mustapha, it was “the knock-out blow for the farmers of the lower Moulouya”. <\/p>\n

‘Exceptional drought’<\/b><\/p>\n

Abderrahim Zekhnini, 61, has given up on his family’s 200-hectare farm.<\/p>\n

He complains that water pumped from the river is shared unequally, with fruit farmers getting preferential treatment.<\/p>\n

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\n \"A
\n A farmer walks down his dried-out melon field.
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But Mohamed Bousfou, the regional director of the agriculture ministry, defends the policy, arguing that dead trees take far longer to replace than seasonal crops.<\/p>\n

“Orchards are given priority in water distribution over the vegetable crops, because we are seeing an exceptional drought,” he said.<\/p>\n

He also dismissed overpumping as a reason for the salinification.<\/p>\n

“Definitely the pumping stations have an impact on the flow of the river, but studies were carried out upstream to avoid any imbalance,” he said.<\/p>\n

The agriculture ministry forecasts worsening drought across Morocco in coming decades, with precipitation falling 11 percent and average temperatures rising 1.3 degrees Celsius by 2050.<\/p>\n

That could cause stocks of water for irrigation to reduce by a quarter, it said in a study.<\/p>\n

But for many of the Moulouya basin’s farmers, the crisis is already here.<\/p>\n

“What gets me the most is seeing my children forced to go and find work elsewhere, on other farms, rather than on our own land,” Zekhnini said.<\/p>\n

Chodna, 33, agreed.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been farming this land and handing it down from father to son, but the situation is getting worse and worse,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Today all the region’s young people are thinking of emigrating.”<\/p>\n\n

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Irrigation, water management play key roles in smoothing drought impacts\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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\n \u00a9 2021 AFP<\/p>\n

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Citation<\/strong>:
\n Drought, overpumping cut Morocco river link to sea (2021, November 15)
\n retrieved 15 November 2021
\n from https:\/\/phys.org\/news<\/a>\/2021-11-drought-overpumping-morocco-river-link.html<\/p>\n

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\n part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n