Water Resources
Senegal's climate is tropical with well-defined dry and humid seasons. Dakar's annual rainfall of about 600 mm occurs between June and October. The mean annual precipitation ranges from 270 mm/yr in the North to 1793 mm/yr in the South. Interior temperatures are much higher than along the coast.
The largest water resource in the country is the Senegal River in the North, shared with Mauritania, Mali and Guinea. Its average flow is 37 billion cubic meters per year. The Lac de Guiers is an important water reservoir in the Upper Delta of the Senegal River on its left bank with a storage volume of almost 500 million cubic meters. It is a chief source of fresh water for the city of Dakar, hundreds of kilometers to the south-west, through underground pipes. While the water of the Senegal River is abundant, water in most of the rest of the country is scarce. Other major surface water bodies include the Casamance River, the Gambia River, the Saloum River, the Geba River, the Falémé River and the Tamna lagoon near Thiès.
Senegal has about 3 billion cubic meters per year of renewable groundwater resources, excluding those groundwater resources that overlap with surface water. Total water withdrawals in 1987 were 1.4 billion cubic meter, of which 92% is for agriculture, 3% for industry and 5% for domestic uses. Groundwater reserves include shallow aquifers which are 0–20 m deep in the Casamance and 40–60 metres (130–200 ft) deep in Kaolack and Tamba, as well as crop-outs in the area of Dakar and Thiès. They also include deep aquifers at a depth of 200–400 metres (660–1,300 ft). Groundwater stocks are estimated at 7 billion cubic meters.
Groundwater overexploitation is a serious problem in parts of Senegal. For example, Mont Rolland, 70 kilometers from Dakar, used to be famous for its mineral springs. Today, villagers need to drill as deep as 80 meters to pump water. The village's groundwater was seriously depleted by over-extraction by the mineral water company, which closed its doors recently. Almost 80 percent of Senegalese horticulturalists are located around Mont Rolland.
Dakar is supplied primarily with water drawn from fossil aquifers that run the risk of being over-exploited and contaminated by salt water intrusion. Some water is being brought in from the Ngnith water treatment plant on the Lake Guiers through a pipeline whose capacity was increased in 1999. Because of growing demand and the need to close contaminated boreholes, even more surface water will have to be brought from the Senegal River over a distance of about 240 km, which entails high investment costs to further expand the capacity of the existing pipeline. The additional volume of water that would be abstracted from the Senegal River is expected to gradually increase from 0.5 m³/s to about 6.0 m³/s in 2030. The required needs are well within Senegal's water rights under the agreements with neighboring countries. However, abstraction of such large quantities of water would have a significant environmental impact on the Lake Guiers and the Senegal River Delta. Furthermore, future low-flow situations of the Senegal River are difficult to predict in the light of climate change and uncertainties about the operations of the Manantali Dam.
Most of the wastewater of Dakar is discharged without treatment into the Atlantic Ocean. Cambérène wastewater treatment plant, the largest facility in operation in the country, treats about 15 percent of the wastewater generated in Dakar. Since 2007 the station is being operated and expanded by the French company SAUR. Some of the treated wastewater is being reused. As of 2007, reuse was being practiced for a golf course and was envisaged for the irrigation of trees, green spaces and vegetable gardens after tertiary treatment.
Read more about this topic: Water Supply And Sanitation In Senegal
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