Hydrologist Sounds Alarm over Addis Ababa’s Shrinking Water Supply
Addis Ababa is undergoing a rapid and profound transformation. The ongoing corridor project has changed the city’s major roads beyond recognition, and a ballooning population means the capital continues to grow in size. Although the merits of the City Administration’s heavy investment in infrastructure, at least aesthetically, are evident, they hide a deep, chronic, and critical problem: Water.
For decades, the city has struggled and failed to balance its fast growth with its unquenchable thirst for fresh water. The trouble has only grown worse in recent years, with rationing and inadequate infrastructure forcing Addis Ababa’s residents and businesses to turn to an exploitative parallel market or to drill for groundwater themselves. The results? A situation where some households spend up to 20 percent of their total income on water, while a proliferation of wells threatens to suck the city’s aquifers dry.
Among the experts who warn that failure to address these problems will lead to a full-blown catastrophe is Tirusew Asefa (PhD), a senior hydrologist at a large water supply firm in the US.
Tirusew has been keeping a close watch on Addis Ababa’s quiet water crisis for several years now. At a UN conference in March 2024, he and his colleagues presented the alarming findings of a study on the city’s water supply. The study revealed that only seven of more than 120 woredas (districts) in Addis Ababa enjoy uninterrupted water supply and warned the city’s ubiquitous water storage tanks and heavy levels of groundwater pumping are leading to an inability to maintain adequate residual levels and ensure water quality.
In short, the capital is running out of water.
The Reporter’s Addis Getachew caught up with Tirusew to get a better understanding of the magnitude of the problem and what needs to be done to keep the capital’s taps flowing. Introduced and edited by Kidus Dawit.
EXCERPTS:
The Reporter: You lead a major urban water provision scheme in the US. Could you take us through the project and your role?
Tirusew Asefa (PhD): I work for a water supply company that caters to the Tampa-St.Petersburg-Clearwater metro area in west central Florida. We are the largest wholesale water provider in the Southeastern United States. In terms of area served, it is as big as Addis Ababa and its surroundings combined. Direct customers within the service area are about 2.6 million people. We provide wholesale water to three counties (Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough) and three cities (Tampa, St. Petersburg and New Port Richey).
We maintain and operate 13 groundwater wellfields that have a capacity of 700,000 cubic meters a day, with about 170 individual wells, eight groundwater treatment facilities, a surface water treatment plant, and a desalination water facility. This is distributed through 435 km of transmission pipelines. We also have an offsite reservoir, as opposed to traditional reservoirs that are built on rivers. We pump water to a higher ground of our offsite reservoir, and we use the water using gravity when we need to. This is a creative idea when you don’t have space to store water on the river. We move a lot of water at a big scale to large areas at long distances.
My group is responsible for designing and implementing computer models that help our operations in week-to-week, to seasonal and decadal planning efforts. For example, in our weekly operations, we shift groundwater production around depending on where it rains. When it is dry, like in Spring, we take more from our reservoir and rely heavily on the groundwater. In the Summer, we fill our reservoir back up and let the groundwater recover. Then we start all over again in the new water year, which begins in October each year.
Some of the business functions our group does is forecast demand: how much water the region needs today, next year, and all the way up to 20 to 30 years into the future. We do a Master Water Plan for the region. Some of the modeling work we do is to figure out where the supply comes from and how much it costs. Our group, you can say, is a one-stop-shop for demand and supply quantification and solutions in the metro area. Our work is a basis for capital projects and currently we are studying supply projects that collectively could cost USD 2.9 billion dollars to bring online.
What challenges have you encountered in your work and how did you overcome them?
Since our group’s work results in multi-billion-dollar investment decisions, we scrutinize our work before we provide guidance to decision makers. One challenge we have faced is having people understand and embrace making decisions when the future is still uncertain. Such is the case for planning for multiple futures in terms of what Mother Nature could throw at us (wet, dry, warm or cold) or how the metro area could grow. Traditional approaches are based on a single historical observation or as we like to call it, a deterministic approach, as opposed to stochastic. It took quite a bit of time for folks to embrace future uncertainty and understand that there are multiple future conditions that we should be ready for.
Given what we witness in terms of weather and hydrologic variability, including demand for water, it is important to anticipate the future and make sure the infrastructure we build is ready to absorb shocks on both the demand and supply side. The same thing can be said about water quality. There are concerns that are prevalent today that were not there even a few years ago. In other words, nobody has a crystal ball and we don’t try to predict a single future. We prepare for multiple future conditions and try to answer the question of what if predictions are wrong. What’s plan B or C or D?
Another big challenge was transforming science into action. We do not do research just for the sake of doing research. We have to demonstrate the value of applied research and make the case for return on investment on practical applications. We have to make sure that our academic partners understand that. We don’t just do a project, publish a scientific paper and move on. We have to implement what we research.
When I was in Ethiopia recently through a Fulbright specialist program, my main topic area of work was how do we align what universities teach and research to utilities’ needs. What I worked on here for a couple decades is directly transferable to Ethiopia. I was able, for example, to spend some time at Addis Ababa University and learn how researchers address the applied science part of the water supply utilities business function. At the same time, I was also learning from students who came directly from industry. What is important for them to learn that they can take back to their institutions and make a difference? That was a great experience that opened many people’s eyes. I also studied through interviews why these students’ work does not translate into action when they go back to their institutions. All this was very interesting to me. I realized that very few people work in the boundary between academia and industry like I do, and I am fortunate to be in that space. I believe that is where we should put more effort if we want to solve the urban water shortage in Ethiopia and build capable folks in the water industry.
You have studied the water supply in Addis Ababa extensively. Tell us about your findings.
For the last several years my colleagues, Dr. Fekadu Moreda and Dr. Edo Abraham, and myself have been looking at the Addis Ababa water issue in depth. Our first publication dived deep into issues behind the chronic water supply and investigated the cascading effects that this water shortage may have on the broader economy and the city’s growth, and we highlighted coping mechanisms used by residents. In short, we found that the gap between water supply and demand was way bigger than we could have imagined. Dangerously uncoordinated groundwater use threatens its sustainability, and inequality through on-premise storage tanks, tilting water use to a small segment of society, which uses up the majority of the water supply from the Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority [AAWSA].
We outlined the consequences of not addressing this issue. We also raised issues about water quality. I think it is public knowledge that today there is much more reliance on plastic bottled water consumption than we have ever seen in the past, not just in the capital but in other cities too.
That is very concerning.
The responses we received for our paper were overwhelming. It was covered by both national and international media. After a few months, we started getting consistent questions from concerned citizens appreciating our work but also raising a critical question: what solutions do we suggest?
For the next year and half, we worked on comprehensive solutions the city administration and the government could take. We did not want to prescribe a single solution but a policy paper that not only highlights the issue but also looked at a combination of approaches that we thought would be useful and could be implemented. We researched the trajectories of developed cities and how they resolved their water issues, and what lessons Addis can take. The water supply business is so complex, there is no single solution to address in a comprehensive way. Among many approaches that we recommended are: the use of conjunctive water supply [not only groundwater but also surface water] as that is the only sustainable long-term solution, some innovative technologies such as Aquifer Recharge and Recover [ASR], reduction of non-revenue water, proper pricing that is responsive to the customer base and takes into consideration equity, a regional institutional framework that allows both within Addis Ababa and the surrounding area to benefit equitably, and many more.
How would you describe the chronic water scarcity in Addis Ababa? Can you elaborate on the magnitude of the problem?
The magnitude of the problem is huge. At the time we completed our roadmap study, the demand-supply gap stood at 60 percent. That means AAWSA was only meeting 40 percent of demand. Our subsequent survey and follow up seems to suggest a deteriorating situation in that people who used to get water twice a week, now are getting it only once. Those who used to get it once a week are now getting it once every two weeks, and so on. Power interruptions mean that people, for example, who get water once a week on a specific day, would have to wait two weeks, waiting for their turn on the same day the following week. There are significant ad-hoc solutions that are being taken by the residents and these are mainly in the form of whoever can afford to install a storage tanker. Installing tankers does not solve the supply shortage problem. It does not increase the amount of water that comes from the source. What it means is those who are able to use tankers can store more water, and those who don’t have tankers wait longer for water. It simply amplifies the inequality in the city. Some of the numbers suggest that about 70 to 80 percent of the water is going to 20 percent or less of account holders—a level of inequality that is hard to see in other countries.
The water shortages also created a parallel market where desperate people pay astronomical prices for jerrycans of water. One very shocking aspect we looked at was the people who rely on the jerrycans pay 12 to 24 times the price we pay for water here in the US. This was shocking to me. Looking at how much of their income is spent on buying the jerrycans, the answer was about 20 percent. That is a lot. Imagine spending 20 percent of your household income on water.
What immediate and long-term solutions do you propose?
I have been asked this question many times and I struggle to answer it. Not because I don’t have anything to say, but because most of the immediate solutions have been implemented and are not providing the needed relief anymore. The short-term solutions passed a long time ago. There has been an effort to implement short-term ‘immediate solutions’ for more than a decade and none of the long-term solutions have been picked up.
Therefore, I am hesitant to tell you: go and find a pocket of groundwater and use that for now. I know that many of the aquifers at mid-level depth [around 250 meters deep] that were considered ‘short-term’ solutions’ have stayed on as ‘long-term’ and the aquifers are drying up. Today, you would have to dig more than 500 meters to have any chance at [finding] groundwater and that is still not sustainable. Even [wells] that came online recently have much less production than they were intended to. Unfortunately, my answer is that there is no short-term solution other than trying to spread out the pain and work on long- term solutions since the ‘immediate’ solutions have been attempted for about a couple of decades.
I would suggest a comprehensive solution that has to have its major component in surface water development, which will allow the groundwater that we see drying up in intermediate depth to recover. Another challenging issue is we don’t really have a clear picture of how much there is and how much withdrawal is sustainable. A recent news article that I saw indicating that the city is planning to conduct a comprehensive assessment and understand what is sustainable is encouraging. I must also say the recent regulation on groundwater use from AAWSA is a good first step in the right direction. But such regulation needs to be backed up by a solid groundwater assessment and modeling tool so regulators have a clear idea of where and how much groundwater is available. AAWSA or other agencies need to know how much water is available, how much can sustainably be used and how long it takes the aquifers to recover—-this currently does not exist. Without this understanding, a sustainable solution is impossible to achieve.
How adequately are problems related to water provision shortage being solved (on the bases of studies so far conducted)?
The short answer is not at all. Most of the studies we highlighted in our roadmap report have already been studied multiple times. There is no shortage of studies. There is a significant shortage of these studies being put into action. Instead, what we are seeing is a water rationing scheme which is becoming more difficult to implement day-by-day. Residents were told they would get water for two to three days when the rationing was put in place a few years back. Now they are getting less and less days. Our research shows that because of the lack of significant investment in supply side, and exponential water demand growth, the city has seen difficulty in implementing rationing policies it put in place. Some of the new supplies that came to the system through groundwater expansion are a drop in the bucket compared to the need. Add to that, these groundwater supplies see drastically reduced capacity in a short period of time because the volume of extraction is not sustainable.
Studies around the world show that although many major cities relied mainly on groundwater when they started out, they had to build significant surface water to sustain growth. That period has come for Addis now to invest in significant surface water resources and manage its groundwater use sustainably.
One thing that worries me is that excessive groundwater use is a recipe for the dangers of land subsidence. We have seen it in many areas here in the US, specifically in California, that the ground subsides significantly following excessive groundwater extraction. That is because anything on the surface (buildings etc.) is carried by both soil and water underneath. When you take out the water that carries part of the surface load, now only the soil has to carry the load and it has to shrink or compact and the land will subside creating dangerous situations. It is one thing if a land subsiding occurs in the farms out in the countryside, but excessive urban groundwater abstraction as we see in Addis Ababa is scary to me.
What lessons could Addis Ababa draw from water provision schemes in the US, including the one you are in charge of?
The growth in Addis Ababa is astonishing; perhaps one could call it one of the fastest growing cities on the entire continent. There is this massive construction of houses that popped up all over the place within a few years. Every time I travel to Addis, I keep getting lost. It is like a small city is being added to Addis Ababa proper every few years. While the growth is commendable and amazing to say the least, the information we have is that neighborhoods that brought tens of thousands of homes have occupancy rates of only one to three percent because of the lack of water and wastewater system infrastructures. And yet, there are plans for a massive number of homes in the pipeline, yet to be constructed or in various stages. I ask myself: where are all these homes going to get their water from? Within our research group we talk about great examples that Addis Ababa could learn from here in Florida or in Washington DC, in terms of historical expansion through satellite cities. In fact, one of my partners, Dr. Fekadu, brings the example of an orderly expansion of Washington DC through satellite cities development. We think the government would need to bring infrastructure before these massive numbers of homes are built. That infrastructure includes water, wastewater and electricity.
To give you a specific example, when my group plans for water in a new expansion area in Tampa Bay, we work with local governments and also use socio-economic projection data to figure out where the expansion would be and how much water that new area needs. Then the calculation for wastewater projects follows. That way, by the time home construction is done, people can move in and get connected to services. Bringing a transmission main to an entire satellite city takes time.
Therefore, there is close collaboration and coordination between different infrastructure providers [water, wastewater, and electricity] in sync with development plans. Otherwise, you would be building tens of thousands of homes and occupancy rates would be so low that these finished buildings will start incurring maintenance costs. This is also lost revenue for water and power companies. If the infrastructure was there, people would move in, and the utilities could start collecting revenues.
What does the future hold in store as the population of Addis Ababa continues to grow?
Addis Ababa accounts for about one-third of Ethiopia’s GDP. That is significant. Addis Ababa’s functional population is significant but infrastructure in water, wastewater and electricity interruption and access need immediate attention. Power is also the reason for some of the water interruptions we see in the capital. You cannot operate a water supply system using generators, even if it is for a short period of time, especially for institutions like AAWSA, which have limited revenue. That is too expensive. Given Ethiopia has built a major dam in GERD, investment in power distribution would certainly alleviate this problem.
The cost of water production is mainly power and chemicals. For cities like Addis Ababa, expenditure on power is a significant part of their operating budget given the significant topographical differences within the service area, from source to delivery point. I am hoping that investment in the water sector will continue to fuel the already remarkable growth the city has seen in the last decade and a half.
How many additional water projects would satisfy the present and future needs of Addis Ababa?
As outlined on our roadmap paper, there isn’t one single solution that would solve the problems. It has to be a combination of all approaches. But from a magnitude perspective, projects like Sibilu and Aleltu-Jida-Robi would make a significant dent on the demand-supply gap the city is facing now. These projects could easily double the total capacity the city has today. That would go a long way in solving the problem.
How can the city’s water resources be regulated and what do you think are the best administrative structures to improve water supply chains?
One of the administrative structures that we proposed was the establishment of a water commission-like authority since regional water supply is within the jurisdiction of Addis Ababa, Oromia Regional State and the federal government. In addition, separating wholesale water delivery from retail delivery allows both to complement each other. The wholesale business function typically deals with long-term demand assessment and investment on major infrastructure while the retail side of the business deals with how fairly that bulk water produced is distributed. This is a primary setup that you will find in major cities around the world. It provides clear delineation of responsibility and accountability. It has also proven to be successful in many places.
Are there new technologies in the US or elsewhere that Addis Ababa could use in its efforts to improve the situation?
I think the major takeaway for Addis from others is the urgency of diversifying its supply portfolio that it needs to start executing. That starts with significant surface water supply investment. The current unbalanced reliance on additional pockets of groundwater here and there will not take the city where it wants to grow. Groundwater has been great and the backbone for the city for a long time. Now it is time to diversify because the current level of groundwater extraction is unstainable, let alone trying to take more out. A comprehensive assessment of groundwater resources as well as regulation, which the city recently started, will go a long way in managing the problem. Above all, our advice would be putting infrastructure before satellite cities not only to accelerate or maintain the remarkable growth the city is having but, in the long term, to save the city billions of dollars.
Retrofitting is a costly and inefficient endeavor.
There is not a single solution but a combination of many, including increasing efficiency in water delivery, rehabilitating some of the depleted and abandoned aquifers through ASR technology, and taking advantage of Addis Ababa’s heavy summer season could make a difference as well. The groundwater has not been given a chance to recover and this takes several years. The way to let it recover and use it as a saving account is by diversifying supply portfolios through surface water production.
Addis Ababa is in an amazing growth state and would continue, in my opinion, to enjoy such a trajectory for many years to come if it can figure out and invest in solving the chronic water issue it is facing today. Many major metropolitan cities around the world, whether it is New York, Tampa Bay or Beijing, faced the same challenges at some point or another in their growth trajectory and I am optimistic that Addis Ababa will follow that trajectory, and it can.
