Basra tackles salt-water crisis with new desalination facility

Shafaq News – Basra

Iraq began construction on a large seawater desalination plant in the southern province of Basra to address its worsening salinity crisis and supply clean drinking water to about 300,000 residents.

Basra Governor Asaad al-Eidani told Shafaq News on Sunday that the project, based on reverse-osmosis (RO) – a water purification technique that filters out salts and impurities – represents a “strategic leap” toward securing sustainable water sources after years of reliance on brackish supplies.

The facility, to be built on a 50,000-square-meter site near the al-Khezeira depots, will feature an intake station with a capacity of 8,000 cubic meters per hour and produce up to 3,000 cubic meters of potable water per hour. Construction is expected to take nearly two years, followed by five years of maintenance and operation.

The reveal follows several days of protests in al-Tamimiya, al-Hayyaniyah, and al-Ashar, where residents blocked roads and burned tires to protest worsening water salinity. In Shatt al-Arab, locals gave the provincial government four days to provide concrete solutions.

Home to about three million people, Basra has long suffered from saltwater intrusion from the Gulf and reduced freshwater inflow from the Tigris and Euphrates, making clean water access one of Iraq’s most persistent challenges.

Read more: Basra’s lifeline poisoned: Salinity and pollution threaten Iraq’s south