Drought forces water rationing in Turkish capital
Pastor Dale Morgan
Drought forces water rationing in Turkish capital*
ANKARA, July 31 (AFP) Jul 31, 2007
Ankara residents were gearing up Tuesday for tight water rationing after
months of exceptionally dry weather depleted the capital city's reservoirs.
From midnight Tuesday, under a municipal plan that divides the city of
nearly four million into two, each section will alternately face
48-hour-long water cuts.
Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek said in a television interview that the
rationing would last for five months at the most, but could be called
off earlier in the event of heavy autumn rainfall.
The rationing came after a municipal ban in May on hosing down cars,
gardens and terraces failed to save enough water, with officials blaming
the poor result on public apathy.
Gokcek said the city, which has seen temperatures soar to 40 degrees
Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), well above seasonal averages, has only 170
million cubic metres (5.95 billion cubic feet) of water left in its dams
and reservoirs -- just 5.0 percent of total capacity.
The rationing has led to a rush on large plastic water containers for
homes and flats and water cisterns for buildings, media reports said.
The city has started building a 375-kilometre (233-mile) pipeline to
bring water from Kizilirmak, the country's longest river, to the east of
the city.
Gokcek said 210 kilometres (131 miles) of the conduit, which will
provide Ankara with 750,000 cubic metres (26.25 million cubic feet) of
water daily when operational, was now complete.
Ankara traditionally has cold winters with lots of snowfall, followed by
hot and dry summers, but this year the city has had minimal snow and
almost no rain during the spring.
The drought has affected many other parts of the country, including its
two other major cities, Istanbul and Izmir, on the Aegean coast.