Water supply and sanitation in Lebanon

Access

According to UN estimates that are not based on any household survey access to an improved water source in Lebanon is universal. The UN figures on water access may not give an accurate picture of the real situation: A representative survey carried out by the World Bank in 2008 estimated that the average connection rate to the public water network was 80%, varying from 96% in Beirut to 55% in the North. These figures are similar to those that came out of a 2004 Household Living Conditions Survey carried out by the Lebanese Central Administration of Statistics. Even considering that improved water sources include protected wells and springs in addition to piped water connections, it is unlikely that water access in Lebanon is universal. For example, many urban households that are not connected to the network rely on water bought from tanker trucks.

The UN statistics show no data on access to sanitation in Lebanon. The World Bank quotes estimates by the Council for Development and Reconstruction showing a 58% share of connection to sewers in 2002. Wastewater collection was highest in Beirut-Mount Lebanon (74%) and lowest in the South (35%). The remaining buildings either use cesspools and septic tanks or simply release raw sewage directly into the environment. A census of Buildings and Establishments in 1996–97 had estimated that only about 37% of the buildings in Lebanon were connected to a sewer network at that time, indicating that the share increased substantially between 1997 and 2002.

Service quality

The quality of water service provision is poor. According to official figures from 2009, the average water availability per day was as follows: 22 hours in the North, 10 hours in the Bekaa, 8 hours in the South, and for Beirut-Mount Lebanon 13 hours in winter, but only 2 hours in summer. There is not a single village or city in Lebanon that receives an uninterrupted residential supply of water. Especially in summer, water shortages are common. For example, in Nabatieh Governorate water reached customers only three times a week in 2007. In Greater Beirut, water supply drops to 3 hours per day during the summer. According to the above-mentioned 2008 survey, the average Lebanese household received 6 hours per day in summer and 9 hours in winter. Only one quarter of Lebanese households received water every day. The continuity of supply was best in the North where 59% said they received water every day in 2008. It was worst in Beirut where this share was only 10%. Poor water quality and intermittent supply impose high costs on households to cope with these deficiencies. Buying water from trucks and the purchase of bottled water are common. Water is also commonly stored in roof tanks, which imposes both an additional cost and jeopardizes water quality. Many households also use pumps to make sure that water reaches the upper floors of houses, which imposes more costs on households. Low pressure and intermittent water supply are caused, among others, by intermittent electricity supply.

According to the World Bank, the Lebanese water supply and sanitation sector has not achieved service provision in line with the country’s level of economic development. The opportunity costs of inadequate public water supply provision amount to 1.3% of GDP every year. The environmental degradation caused by the discharge of untreated wastewater is estimated to cost an additional 1% of GDP every year.

However, the failure to provide a continuous water supply does not appear to be a major bottleneck for the Lebanese, where water storage tanks are in common use. What matters is the water quality, which is often insuffient, and that households have enough water to keep the tanks supplied, which is not always the case.

Modern history

The Lebanese infrastructure has been badly scarred by the 1975–90 Civil War. After the war the water and sanitation infrastructure was rebuilt with substantial external financial assistance. In South Lebanon, which remained under Israeli occupation until 2000, the infrastructure was gradually rebuilt as the Israeli army withdrew. Compared to the substantial investment in infrastructure, little effort was made at building the capacity of sector institutions and at establishing policies that favor the sustainability and improve the quality of services provided. Also, wastewater treatment was neglected in terms of investments compared to water supply and sewerage. Untreated wastewater was thus discharged to the sea and to rivers. No efforts were made to conserve water. Still today, Lebanon is one of the few countries in the Middle East that has almost no water meters.

Institutional weaknesses and lack of sustainability

External financing institutions were concerned with the insufficient capacity to operate and maintain the infrastructure they were financing in Lebanon. Until 2000 there were 21 water authorities in Lebanon who were financially and technically weak. The limited sewer networks, if they existed at all, were managed by the respective municipalities, which had often even less technical and financial capacity than the water authorities. In the absence of a sanitation tariff, municipalities lacked the financial resources to operate and maintain sanitation infrastructure. The experience with wastewater treatment plants is illustrative of the difficulties encountered. For example, the operating costs for the first wastewater treatment plant in Lebanon, the Al-Ghadir plant in Beirut completed in 1997, still have to be subsidized by the government because the municipal governments in the service area (the Beirut and Baabda districts) lack the resources to do so. Furthermore, incomplete infrastructure considerably reduces the development impact of the plant. Because the construction of sewers was delayed, most of the sewage of Southern Beirut still flowed into the Mediterranean without any treatment via both the Al Ghadir River and sea outlets. The Al Ghadir plant provides only preliminary treatment, followed by discharge through a 2.6 km marine outfall. The second wastewater treatment plant built in Lebanon, intended for the city of Baalbek and completed in 2001, could not be put into operation, because both the sewer system and the outfall main were not completed. Wastewater treatment plants in Tripoli and Sidon were inaugurated in 2009 and 2010 respectively, both long after they were due to be completed.

Sector reform

At the national level, policy-making was fragmented between the Ministry of Energy and Water in charge of drinking water supply and the Ministry of Interior in charge of sanitation, as well as other stakeholders such as the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Environment. The donors thus pressed for a sector reform that would create commercially oriented regional water and sanitation companies that would achieve economies of scale. In 2000 a new water law was passed that created four Regional Water Establishments. However, the transfer of actual responsibilities to them remained slow and the water authorities continued to remain in charge of operating infrastructure. The Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) also remained in charge of procuring works and consulting contracts, including service contracts to operate infrastructure despite the responsibilities bestowed on the new Establishments under the Water Law.

According to a 2010 World Bank ten years after the Water Law has been passed it "has not been fully enforced and implemented, thus creating institutional uncertainty over sector responsibilities". Furthermore, "the four RWEs severely lack managerial and financial autonomy and are impeded by limited inter-agency coordination and weak central government oversight. They have not been able to effectively operate and maintain water supply networks, fully engage with the private sector, recover costs and hire qualified staff".

Private sector participation

In 2003 the municipality of Tripoli signed the first and so far only management contract for water supply in Lebanon. This was done after four years of preparation that required passing a new law (Law 401) to allow public-private partnerships in water supply. The contract was awarded to the French company Ondéo‐Liban, a subsidiary of Suez Environnement, after a competitive bidding process. The cost of 20 million Euro was financed by the French Development Agency. The contract included the operation, maintenance, and installation of equipment, the organization of the billing system and collection of water tariffs, the management of human and financial resources, and the supervision of the construction of a tertiary water supply network and the expansion of a water treatment plant. The private company increased the billing efficiency from 30% to 60%, reduced water rationing, mapped the network, updated the customer inventory, computerized the accounting system and trained staff. Non-revenue water was reduced from 65% to 45% and the 10-year-long water rationing in the areas of Qalamoun, Qobbe and Abi Samra was eliminated, making Tripoli the only city in Lebanon that receives water 24 hours per day. Water quality and the customer service were also improved. However, cost recovery was not achieved despite an increase in tariffs because bill collection efficiency remained low. The company was unable to introduce metering, although 40,000 meters were acquired. The contract faced a number of challenges: According to a study by the French Institute for Public-Private Partnerships, the supervisory committee was composed of former employees of the public water company who were not convinced of the usefulness of private sector participation. Despite its achievements, the management contract ended in 2007 without being extended.

Impact of 2006 War

Water infrastructure, especially in the South, was further damaged during the Israeli-Lebanese War of 2006. Israeli armed forces "destroyed water tanks, springs and pipelines, leaving most of southern Lebanon totally cut off from mains water supply in the immediate aftermath of the war", according to UN sources. The infrastructure was rebuilt after the war, partly by Hizbollah's construction company Jihad al-Bina. Foreign donors also played an important role in reconstruction, including UNICEF and Technisches Hilfswerk from Germany.

Responsibility for water supply and sanitation

Among the key public stakeholders in the Lebanese water and sanitation sector are the Ministry of Water and Energy, which is in charge of policy and regulation; the Ministry of Finance, which provides funding and coordinates external cooperation; the Ministry of Environment; the Council for Development and Reconstruction, which is in charge of most investments in the sector; and four Regional Water Establishments, which are in charge of service provision. The sector is characterized by a significant gap between legal responsibilities of stakeholders and their actual activities. The legal text to organize the work of MEW has not been developed as of 2012. MEW’s efforts are still dedicated to investment projects and not on policy and regulation. The Ministry still has units dedicated to investment studies, although these functions should have been transferred to the Water Establishments.

Policy and regulation: The Ministry of Water and Energy

Within the Lebanese government the Ministry of Water and Energy is in charge of developing and implementing policies related to water supply and sanitation. As of 2010, there was no specific policy or strategy document outlining the government’s policy in the sector. The Ministry seems to focus on energy and to pay less attention to water, not to speak of sanitation.

The legal framework consists of the Water Law 221/2000 that reorganized the sector into four Regional Water Establishments. The law was amended twice shortly after it was passed: Law 241/2000 reduced the number of Regional Water Establishments from 5 to 4; and Law 337/2001 included wastewater treatment in the responsibilities of the Regional Water Establishments and of the Ministry of Water and Energy. In October 2005 some bylaws for the aforementioned laws were published.

Service provision: The four Regional Water Establishments

Provision of drinking water supply and wastewater treatment is the responsibility of the four Regional Water Establishments that were created by the 2000 Water Law:

Although the establishments are legally responsible for irrigation and wastewater treatment, they are not engaged in these activities. There is no strategic or business planning, nor a focus on performance. There is a limited focus on IT and on asset management; customer service is fragmented. By law Lebanese water utilities should have 4,050 employees, but they actually had only 1,342 as of 2010. This is due to a hiring freeze imposed by the government. The number of employees has thus declined during the first decade of the 21st century. The gaps at the lower levels were partially filled with temporary laborers. But there are also important gaps in managerial positions. The average number of staff is less than 2 per 1000 connections, much below the regional average. The Beirut-Mount Lebanon utility has only 1.6 staff per 1000 connections. Utilities are thus unable to perform some of their basic functions. The Board members of the Water Establishments are nominated by the Cabinet upon the proposition of the Minister of Energy and Water. Municipalities have no say in the nomination of Board members. There have been only limited attempts to involve the private sector in operating water and sewer systems. A management contract for the city of Tripoli with a French firm has not been renewed after it expired (see history section).

The operation and maintenance of sewer systems remains under the responsibility of municipalities.

The Council for Development and Reconstruction and other national agencies

The Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) plays a major role in the sector, because it is responsible for the planning and construction of much of the public water investments and all wastewater investments in the country. It is also the implementing agency for most investment programs financed by external agencies. In addition, the Council of the South and the Central Fund for the Displaced have financed almost half of all investments in water supply in Lebanon during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Council for the South, nominally under the Primer Minister's Office, is controlled by the mostly Shiite Amal Movement of Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanon's Parliament since 1992.

Tariffs

Tariffs are set at different levels for each of the four regional water establishments. Within each service area tariffs are the same, although costs differ significantly. For example, Beirut receives most of its water by gravity, while in some other localities water needs to be pumped. The following table shows residential water tariffs for the four regional utilities per year and per connection for 1m3/day, excluding VAT.

The level of consumption is limited to 1m3 per day by a gauge installed on all residential connections. However, actual consumption is typically lower because of intermittent supply and low water pressure. The price of water per cubic meter obviously depends on the level of consumption, which varies and is not well known. Assuming an average-size household with 4.5 members that receives 100 liter per capita per day, the price of water is almost US$1/m3 in Beirut and US$0.66/m3 in the Bekaa. Tariffs in Lebanon thus are higher than in Jordan (US$0.65/m3 including sanitation) and much higher than in Syria or in Egypt (US$0.05/m3).

The water bill has to be paid in full in advance for an entire year, which imposes a heavy burden on the poor. A household in the poorest quintile connected to the network paid an average of LBP 421,000 for water in 2008, corresponding to 3.7% of its income. More than half of these expenditures are for alternative water sources such as bottled water or water from trucks.

Cost recovery

Cost recovery varies between utilities. The collection rate (i.e. the shares of bills actually paid) in Beirut-Mount Lebanon has been consistent at almost 90%, so that the utility had accumulated over US$170 million as cash surplus in 2010. However, as of 2010 it was estimated to be only 62%. In the three other Regional Water Establishments collection rates are lower at 58% in the North, 52% in the South and only 18% in the Bekaa. In the three Establishments not even operating costs are recovered. The Government often steps in to pay for operating expenses in addition to financing investments in water infrastructure. Cost recovery is lowest for the Bekaa water company. According to a World Bank report, "there appears to be an informal understanding between water companies and households: many households don’t receive their water allotment, and the water companies often don’t pressure households to pay their bills." Given the current conditions and alternatives, households have stated in surveys that they are reluctant to pay more for better public service. Even where meters have been installed, there is no volumetric tariff. Flat fees are charged regardless of the existence of the meters. There thus is no financial incentive to save water. There is also no wastewater tariff.

Investment and financing

Public investment for water and wastewater sector amounted to 0.4 percent of GDP in the late 90s and early 2000s. This includes US$97m for water supply and US$32m for sanitation every year. Investments are to a large extent financed by external grants and loans. For example, 73% of CDR-executed investments in the water sector were financed by external donors and 56% of its wastewater investments.