The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

Drilling underground wells, a dangerous and pervasive step that threatens future water disasters in the absence of censorship in the recent years

8 years of tragic events have overshadowed all branches of life and disrupted many of its constituents, where the water pumping stations have not been spared the consequences of this war, the heavy shelling, clashes, and destruction caused by these years, they caused massive destruction in the infrastructure in the stations that supply the potable water and the daily used water, as not to mention the power outages, which deprived hundreds of thousands of civilians -within areas of control of the factions and Tahrir al-Sham in the Syrian north- from having water through major water pumping networks, and reliable sources confirmed to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that this thing forced the people to resort to other ways of acquiring this water, and these methods varies, such as digging underground wells by people who are able to bear the costs of these wells, due to their great need for water for farmland irrigation or to use these wells as a large income source to benefit from them by selling water to the people with tankers and at great prices.
Although many of the areas of the Syrian north which are out of control of the regime forces -such as areas in the countryside of Hama and Idlib- largely lack the presence of potable water; the phenomenon of drilling random wells is very prevalent, and now where you go you will find the diggers digging wells remarkably, and almost all villages and towns have these groundwater wells, and now this phenomenon has become a trade for many civilians, where the owner of a large land digs a well or more around its land to use them for watering the land, especially in the past several years in which rainfall was relatively low, and the presence of such wells around a piece of agricultural land is useful for the owner because it increases the value of the land materially.

Reliable sources confirmed to the Syrian Observatory that the owner of the land supplies water to the residents of his hometown at prices of up to 2500 Syrian pounds per tank, without taking into account or caring about the dangers of this phenomenon for the future generations, which pose a serious threat to them, because they greatly contribute to the lack of groundwater reservoir in the area, and argues that the current presence of these wells is beneficial to people deprived of potable water and an urgent need to be provided, regardless of the conditions necessary to controlled the randomness of these wells to avoid future risks.

In a testimony to an expert in this field from the countryside of Idlib province, he spoke to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights: “the underground wells are divided into two types, surface wells and the depth of the well of which is about 150 meters, and other artesian wells, where the depth of such wells often exceeds 200 meters to 700 meters, this type of wells is called “strategic groundwater wells,” and prior to the Syrian revolution in Syria, there were many stringent procedures and rules for drilling wells, in order to reduce the depletion of groundwater, where the previously licensed wells by the Syrian regime’s government were more than 4000 wells, but after the Syrian revolution things were very different, due to the lack of a regulatory body that regulates well drilling, were there is no accurate statistic about the number of wells in the northern, western, and southern countryside of Idlib, but they are more than 30000 wells and most of them are not licensed, in fact this number is very high, because the presence of such an enormous amount of wells poses a threat to the underground reservoir and a major threat to the lives of future generations, where drilling those wells will -of course- lead to lower groundwater levels, and the reliable sources confirmed to the Syrian Observatory that there is currently no accurate measurements about the percentage of this decrease as a result of its continuous drilling, all without any legal accountability by the concerned authorities, and we firmly believe that this decline if it was too big, then the rainwater coming to the ground will not be able to fill the shortfall sufficiently, as the past years had relatively low rainfall.

The reliable sources also confirmed to the Syrian Observatory that the matter is more dangerous than digging underground wells in some areas, where many people dig wells in depth up to 400 meters and pour the sewage water inside, with nothing to block these contaminated water at the bottom of the well, this is a more serious phenomenon than the previous one, where the contaminated water slips through underground holes and causes a health hazzard, especially when it is close to farmland or populated places, and some people use this method of sewage drainage because it is considered less expensive than digging swage holes, in addition to the need to cleaning them every now and then, and many civilians in the countryside of Idlib and Hama confirm the presence of this phenomenon also, but not significantly right now, and they demand to deal seriously with this phenomenon and get rid of it, where many decisions were previously issued by the concerned authorities, such as the “Water Directorate” of the Syrian interim government prohibiting the use of such underground wells for purposes other than the extracting usable water, because pouring sewage water inside them is a very dangerous phenomenon, threatening environmental and food pollution and leads to the spread of diseases and epidemics, and in the same context, many people argue the use of this method and have several pretexts, including the fact that many villages and towns in the countryside of Hama and Idlib have a sewage system but they are cracked and very old, also they are not enough to meet the needs of all the population, especially with the population density that recently occurred at the north, they take these actions to reduce the wages of digging sewage holes, and because the sewage drainage in wells provides them with a continuous long-term solution, and many environmental specialists assert the danger of this phenomenon, and describe it as terrifying and threatening for the future of thousands of people in areas of the Syrian north in general, also many people in the countryside of Hama and Idlib urgently call for the reduction of these phenomena, which threaten their lives and the lives of their future generations, and called on those concerned in the local councils and organizations to work diligently to put an end for it, in order to ensure a better future than the current situation they suffer from.