Twelve operational seawater desalination plants have an annual installed capacity of 179 million cubic meters, to which 37 million cubic meters from brackish water desalination must be added, said Minister of Logistics Mohamed Abdeljalil on behalf of Minister of Water Nizar Baraka on Monday.
In an answer to a question posed at the House of Representatives, this production capacity has just been increased by 110 million cubic meters, thanks to contributions from two stations at Safi and Jorf Lasfar, built by the OCP to supply the towns of Safi and El Jadida with potable water.
The Minister emphasized that projects in Sidi Ifni, Tarfaya, Dakhla, and Casablanca will be initiated and completed in the upcoming years, further increasing this capacity.
He mentioned that a number of stations are now being constructed, with Casablanca-Settat being the largest and having a capacity of 300 million cubic meters/year. The initial phase of development would be completed through a public-private partnership (PPP).
In addition to the stations planned as part of the National Program on Drinking and Irrigation Water (PNAEPI) 2020-2027, these accomplishments will be bolstered by the introduction of further saltwater desalination projects targeted at raising output capacity to 1 billion cubic meters/year by 2030.
He also stated that the succession of droughts over the last two years has revealed the precarious state of the water system in the country’s north and center, implying that the Kingdom needs to diversify its sources of supply–particularly desalination–which has enabled the Kingdom to supply several regions with both drinking water and irrigation water, in particular the Al Hoceima and Agadir municipalities.
The Minister stated that Morocco has been employing desalination since the 1970s to supply drinking water to its southern regions due to a paucity of traditional water resources, through the building of small and medium-sized facilities such as those at Laâyoune, Boujdour, and Tan-Tan.