The Libyan House of Representatives declared the city of Zliten a disaster zone on Monday due to a rising groundwater crisis. The parliament also allocated a budget to address the crisis and tasked the government with monitoring the situation in the city.
The Libyan government had previously declared a state of emergency in Zliten, located in western Libya, due to the rising groundwater levels. The government called on all relevant parties to take the necessary measures to deal with the situation, including protecting the city’s residents from the dangers of the water and helping them overcome its effects.
The Libyan parliament’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources also called for immediate intervention by the Libyan government and all relevant authorities to solve the problem of rising groundwater levels in Zliten to avoid a humanitarian or environmental disaster.
For years, the city of Zliten has been facing a strange phenomenon: groundwater is rising to the surface, damaging buildings and agricultural land. The phenomenon has worsened in recent weeks, prompting families to leave the city.
Observers believe that the Great Man-Made River (GMR) may have increased the groundwater reserves in the coastal area, which has caused cracks in the earth’s layers.
Mustafa Al-Bahbah, head of the Crisis and Emergency Management Committee in the Municipality of Zliten, confirmed that the crisis of rising groundwater levels in some areas of the municipality is still ongoing, and that there are families who have left their homes due to this problem. He pointed out that the scale of the disaster is very large.
Al-Bahbah added that they are continuing to pump out the water, especially since the water level in some areas that are about 3 kilometers from the sea reaches two meters. He also said that they have asked the government to allocate an urgent budget to address the problem.
Zliten is located in northwestern Libya on the Mediterranean coast. It relies heavily on groundwater for most of its needs, as it is the main source of water there. This water is extracted by drilling wells, either shallow wells that do not exceed the first water layer that collects above the first impermeable layer, and these wells reach a depth of 30 meters, or deep wells that exceed 30 meters in depth.
