Seven Liters a Day: Inside Taiz's Water Emergency with Ali Alqubati

A city that once piped 25,000 cubic meters of water a day now leaves most of its families living on less than 7.5 liters per person. In this episode of DevelopmentAid Dialogues podcast, host Hisham Allam speaks with Ali Alqubati, WASH sub-national cluster area coordinator for Taiz and the West Coast of the Yemen WASH Cluster, about the collapse and slow repair of Taiz's water system - and what it would take for the city to drink without aid. Based in Taiz and coordinating 48 WASH partners, Alqubati sees both the engineering and the diplomacy from the inside. 

Before the conflict, Taiz drew on roughly 95 boreholes. Today about 31 operate, and the public network delivers around one-third of the needed daily water quantity. Seventy-one percent of residents buy from private trucks at US$8 to US$10 per cubic meter. 

"The water crisis does not wait for office hours," he said. 

So why not simply switch the idle wells back on? 

"Restoring wells does not mean simply turning on the pumps," he explained. "If extraction exceeds recharge, the well may work temporarily but fail again." 

In western Taiz, he noted, water levels are falling several meters a year. That makes the response's signature technology double-edged. 

"Solar energy can actually accelerate groundwater depletion," he warned, where a borehole is over-pumped. 

Financing is the other constraint, though not in the way donors might assume. Restoring about 5,000 cubic meters a day from existing wellfields costs roughly US$1 million, he said, while developing new sources of lower capacity would require at least US$9 million. 

There has been progress. Production has climbed from 7% to 29%, and after more than three years of technical negotiation, two parties signed an agreement to jointly manage supply, supported by the Yemen Humanitarian Fund. 

"Water is a humanitarian issue that affects everyone, regardless of boundaries," he said. 

Pressed on who gets water and who waits, he did not hedge: the most vulnerable, ranked by cholera risk, displacement, and proximity to front lines. 

"Prioritization does not mean that people outside those areas do not need assistance," he stressed. "We are forced to make difficult decisions because resources are limited." 

Asked whether Taiz could one day manage without relief agencies, his answer was firm. 

"The challenge is not that solutions do not exist. The challenge is the scale of financing and support." 

Listen to the full episode with Ali Alqubati on DevelopmentAid Dialogues. Stay informed. Stay engaged.

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