Georgian Seaport Short of Water

Five months after the official launch of a round-the-clock water supply in the west Georgian port town of Poti, residents are still restricted to turning on the taps for a few hours once every couple of days.

Poti, a town of 50,000 people on the Black Sea, is the location of Georgia’s largest port and a free industrial zone, but it has been waiting for a constant supply of mains water for decades.

On April 7, President Mikhail Saakashvili, accompanied by camera crews, visited the home of the Chelidze family and ceremonially turned on a tap to mark the start of 24-hour provision.

“This is a historic event,” Saakashvili said. “This has not happened since the foundation of the city, or under the Communists. Together with our friends, we have managed to solve a problem which even I doubted we could solve.”

But the city’s water problem had not in fact been solved.

Immediately after the ceremony, the Chelidze family, like other city residents, found their running water was again being rationed according to a timetable.

“We only get water every second day, and then just for a few hours,” said Murman Nachkebia, a resident of Poti.

The quality of the water also leaves much to be desired.

“A year does not go by without intestinal infections, typhus, dysentery and other waterborne diseases. There have been outbreaks in various parts of the city this year, too,” Leila Kasradze, an epidemiologist and head of the Social Healthcare Council of Poti, said.

The authorities announced plans to tackle the water issue in 2004, and the town council asked the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to conduct a detailed technical study, which concluded in 2006.

With a project budget of 27 million laris or 15 million US dollars, partly in foreign loans and grants and the rest in government spending, a new reservoir was built and connected up to the mains supply network.

The city’s decrepit mains network, which contributes to the shortage of water because so much leaks away before it reaches the taps, was not replaced under the project.

Nor has the reservoir been an outstanding success. Murman Nadareishvili, deputy director of Dasavletis Tskali, the water distribution company for most of western Georgia, says that when the weather is too dry, the reservoir empties, while when it does rain, the water coming out of it is dirty and unfit for human consumption.

“Either a mistake was made during the planning stage, or else the builders made a mistake when they constructed the reservoir,” Nadareishvili said. “The water has a yellow colour, and a particular taste and odour.”

He said staff from his company staff turned off the flow from the reservoir whenever it started raining.

According to experts, the only positive effect of the project was to install meters, thus making it possible to ensure consumers paid their water bills, raising revenue for more work on the system. However, although people had to pay for the meters and the water tariff was raised, the supply remained as intermittent as ever.

Experts say a second phase of work is needed to install filtration units at the reservoir and to repair and replace pipes across the city.

Zaza Gorozia, governor of Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti, the western Georgian region where Poti is located, agreed that fresh investment was needed and said the authorities were close to finding this.

“Believe me, there is nowhere that wastes as much water as Poti. The network is completely decrepit, so we’re spending an extra 5.5 million dollars to completely replace the pipe network,” he said.

The water company in Poti says the filtration system alone would cost 2.3 million euro while a total overhaul of the mains network would come to over 33 million euro.

It remains uncertain whether the sums required to fix the system can be found. Until that happens, it looks like residents will be living with a rationed supply of water, of sometimes dubious purity.

Lasha Zarginava is editor of the Resume newspaper.