Israel-based firm donates three solar water machines to Gaza
Israel’s crippling 14-year blockade has worsened the water disaster facing Gaza residents, with key materials and equipment needed to produce potable water withheld from the coastal enclave.
A Russian-Israeli billionaire – shocked by images of children filling water in plastic containers from a street vendor – decided to act.
Michael Mirilashvili, the billionaire businessman, owns a company called Watergen, which produces clean drinking water from the air through solar-powered technology.
Mirilashvili’s Israel-based company donated three machines to Gaza after seeing the plight of his Palestinian neighbours.
The Israeli-based Merilashvili Company donated three machines to Gaza after he witnessed the plight of his Palestinian neighbors.
He told Al-Jazeera that the drinking water crisis in Gaza had affected him personally. “We want every child there to have the best quality drinking water,” he said.
Fathi Sheikh Khalil, director of the Gaza branch of the Palestinian non-governmental organization Damour for Community Development, said that the project is not close to covering the water demand of Gaza’s two million residents, but that “it could help in the long term to solve the water problem.” This helped bring two water generators to the region.
The main source of water in Gaza is the aquifer, but the World Bank warned last year that 97% of the groundwater is unfit for drinking. The overuse of the aquifer allowed seawater, which was to a large extent contaminated with partially treated wastewater or not treated at all, to seep into the groundwater, resulting in increased levels of salinity and pollution.
Few of the affluent residents depend on imported bottled water, while a dwindling middle class has water purification devices in their kitchens. But with half the population, a million people, Living below the poverty lineThe only remaining solution is to buy water from trucks that patrol the Gaza Strip all day. However, two-thirds of these waters are actually present Polluted When it is delivered, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Gaza needs more than 200 million cubic meters of water annually. Experts believe that desalination of sea water is the most viable solution. Three desalination plants funded by the international community, including the United Nations and the European Union, produce about 13 million cubic meters of water annually. The most ambitious project is to build a central desalination plant with a capacity of 55 million cubic meters next year.
The acute energy shortage that has characterized life in Gaza over the past 14 years has been a formidable obstacle to resolving the water crisis. A solar farm must be built for every desalination plant.
But water generators can be run either with electricity from local networks or solar energy.
High-tech devices absorb and purify the air before it is sent to the condensing chamber where the steam is processed and converted into drinking water. The washing machine drains the water through a tap and can be heated or cooled.
