Water supply and sanitation in Morocco

Morocco: Water and Sanitation
Data
Access to an improved water source	82% (2011)
Access to improved sanitation	70% (2011)
Continuity of supply in urban areas (%)	100%
Average urban water use (liter/capita/day)	n/a
Average urban water tariff (US$/m3)	US$
Share of household metering	very high
Annual investment in WSS	$22 per capita (2005)
Share of self-financing by utilities	low
Share of tax-financing	n/a
Share of external financing	high
Institutions
Decentralization	Yes, for larger cities
National water and sanitation company	Yes, for bulk water supply and small towns
Water and sanitation regulator	None
Responsibility for policy setting	Ministry of Energy, Mines, Water and Environment
Sector law	Water resources law, but no specific law for water supply and sanitation
Number of urban service providers	17 (ONEE, 4 private operators and 12 local utilities)
Number of rural service providers	n/a

This article was last comprehensively updated in May 2010, with a partial update in July 2014.

Water supply and sanitation in Morocco is provided by a wide array of utilities. They range from private companies in the largest city, Casablanca, the capital, Rabat, and two other cities, to public municipal utilities in 13 other cities, as well as a national electricity and water company (ONEE). The latter is in charge of bulk water supply to the aforementioned utilities, water distribution in about 500 small towns, as well as sewerage and wastewater treatment in 60 of these towns.

There have been substantial improvements in access to water supply, and to a lesser extent to sanitation, over the past fifteen years. Remaining challenges include a low level of wastewater treatment (only 13% of collected wastewater is being treated), lack of house connections in the poorest urban neighborhoods, and limited sustainability of rural systems (20 percent of rural systems are estimated not to function). In 2005 a National Sanitation Program was approved that aims at treating 60% of collected wastewater and connecting 80% of urban households to sewers by 2020. The issue of lack of water connections for some of the urban poor is being addressed as part of the National Human Development Initiative, under which residents of informal settlements have received land titles and have fees waived that are normally paid to utilities in order to connect to the water and sewer network.

Morocco has about 22 billion cubic meter of conventional renewable water resources per year equivalent to 730 cubic meter/capita/year. Before taking into account drought years of the 1990s and 2000s total renewable water resources were estimated to be much higher at around 29 billion cubic meters However, only up to 20 billion cubic meter per year can be economically captured (ressources mobilisables), including 16 billion m3 of surface water and 4 billion m3 of groundwater. Morocco has about 100 dams of various sizes with a total storage capacity of 15 billion cubic meter. It was estimated that in 2004 about 13.5 billion m3 were withdrawn, or about 67% of available resources. 83% of withdrawals were for agriculture and 17% for municipal and industrial uses. However, water resources are not divided equally in space and time, with most of the water resources available in the North and rainfall limited to the winter. In addition, the quality of water resources is degraded through pollution, in particular in the Sebou basin.

Morocco is divided in seven major river basins and a number of smaller basins. The seven major basins from North to South are the Loukkos River, the Moulouya River, the Sebou River, the Bou Regreg River, the Oum Er-Rbia River, the Tensift River and the Souss-Massa basin. Except for the Loukkos River, all these rivers originate in the Atlas Mountains.There are few inter-basin transfers in Morocco, the most important ones being the Rocade canal from the Oum Er-Rbia basin to the Tensift basin near Marrakesh, a transfer from near the mouth of the Oum er-Rbia to Casablanca and a transfer from the Bouregreg River also to Casablanca. There are tentative plans for a large north-south water transfer project with an average conveyance capacity of around 2.74 million cubic meter/day (0.75 billion m3/year) over 500–600 km from the Sebou River basin to the water-stressed Tensift basin.

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Wikipedia