Libya’s House of Representative declared Zliten a “devastated city” today due to the distraction caused by rising groundwater levels.
This came during a parliamentary today in Benghazi, headed by the First Deputy Speaker of the House, Fawzi Al-Nuwairi.
The decision was preceded by demands from members of the House of Representatives from the city of Zliten to declare it a disaster area, and to establish a fund to redress the damage to the people, with the formation of a committee responsible for finding out the cause of the groundwater level problem. Other members of the House suggested evacuating the area and providing temporary housing rent to the residents.
The city of Zliten, located in western Libya, has been experiencing a strange phenomenon for years: groundwater gushing upwards to damage buildings and agricultural land. The phenomenon has worsened in recent weeks, forcing families to leave the city.
Observers believe that the artificial river has increased the groundwater reserves on the coast, which caused cracks in the earth’s layers.
Mostafa Al-Bahbah, head of the Crisis and Emergency Management Committee in Zliten Municipality, confirmed that the crisis of rising groundwater levels in some areas in Zliten Municipality was still ongoing and that some families had left their homes because of this problem. He said that the scale of the disaster was very large.
Al-Bahbah said that they were continuing the water withdrawal operations, especially in some areas that were about 3 kilometers away from the sea, where the water level had risen to two meters. He said that they had asked the government to allocate an urgent and emergency budget to address the problem.
The Zliten region is one of the areas located in the northwest of Libya on the Mediterranean coast, which depends heavily on groundwater in most areas, making it the main source of water there.