Water is being gradually piped into Tripoli several days after the city suffered from water shortage, Great Man-Made River (GMR) Authority at Jeffara Plain announced on Wednesday.
In a Wednesday statement, the primary distributor of potable water in Libya said its facility in Tripoli was attacked by unidentified men, causing water leak and delaying the arrival of water to the city.
GMR is a network of underground pipelines bringing high-quality fresh water from ancient underground aquifers found deep in the Sahara, Libya’s northeastern region, to the coast of Libya for domestic use, agriculture, and industry.
In the 1950s, the water was first discovered in the al-Kufrah area in Libya’s Sahara during oil exploration. Plans were put later in the 1980s to build a massive network of pipelines extending to the coast. To manage the project, the Libyan government established the GMR Authority in 1983.
The first phase began to supply water in 1989, second phase 1996, third phase was completed by 2009.
To provide water supplies to all Libyan cities, the project has several phases; phase I provides two million cubic meters of water a day along a 1,200-kilometer pipeline from As-Safir and southeastern Libyan town Tazirbu to Benghazi and Sirte, via the Ajdabiya reservoir.
After phase I proved successful in 1989, phase II started delivering one million cubic meters a day in 1996 from the southern Libya Fezzan region to Jeffara Plain on the western coastal belt, as well as supplying Tripoli.
To expand phase I, phase III began in 2009, and it is divided into two parts; firstly, it provides the planned expansion of the existing phase I system, adding an additional 1.68 million cubic meters a day. Secondly, it supplies Tobruk in eastern Libya and the coast from a new well field in al-Jaghboub town in the eastern Libyan Sahara.
