Sustainable Transformation of Urban Water Infrastructure in Amman, Jordan – Meeting Residential Water Demand in the Face of Deficient Public Supply and Alternative Private Water Markets

Rapid urban growth processes pose severe challenges to the existing water infrastructure, particularly in developing countries (see Bedtke and Gawel, Chap. 3 in this volume). Responding to these challenges might exceed the scope of a gradual change and require a sustainability-oriented system transformation (Kabisch and Kuhlicke 2014). This chapter examines the prospects for such an urban transformation in Amman, the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, where the challenges of supplying water to all residents are particularly demanding. Since the year 2000, the population of the greater Amman municipality is estimated to have grown by more than one third (DOS 2014), and this trend can be expected to persist, due to continually high rates of immigration of Syrian refugees. In addition, Jordan is among the most water-scarce countries in the world (Yorke 2013) and is currently overexploiting its renewable groundwater sources by about 65% above the sustainable extraction rate (IRG 2015). Thus, making progress towards a more sustainable use of its freshwater resources is a matter of urgency. The pressing scarcity of water has led Miyahuna, the public water utility of Amman, to introduce a water quantity rationing scheme by which households only receive water for a limited number of hours per week, leading to perceived and actual water quality problems (supply interruptions can, e.g., lead to contaminant infiltration and the development of biofilms; see Hashwa and Tokajian 2004; Yorke 2013; Potter and Darmame 2010). Both the supply intermittency and the quality concerns have forced residents to intensify the use of various coping strategies (e.g., maintaining private storages, ordering private water tankers, purchasing bottled water), which further complicate any targeted steps to initiate a transformation of the public water supply system and water use patterns towards sustainability.