Red Sea Water Company Says It Will Pursue Network Encroachment as a Legal Matter

The Red Sea Water Company says it is taking strict legal measures against encroachment on its networks, in a move it frames as protecting state utility infrastructure, according to a report published on 8 September by Ahram Gate.

The report sets out the company's position rather than a specific case. It does not give the number of encroachments recorded, name the districts where they were found, specify the penalties involved, or attribute the statement to a named official.

Encroachment on a water network, in the sense Egyptian utilities use the term, covers several things at once:

• unlicensed connections drawing water directly off the mains
• tampering with meters and valves
• building or dumping over the line of a buried pipe so that crews cannot reach it

Each has the same downstream effect: pressure lost before the water reaches the end of the line, and leaks that are found late.

That matters more on this coast than in most of Egypt. Hurghada, Safaga, El Quseir and Marsa Alam are supplied by desalination plants and by long transmission lines rather than by a river running past the door, so every cubic metre lost to an illegal tap or an undetected break has to be produced or pumped again. The company has been expanding that supply — this site reported earlier on a solar-powered desalination plant planned for Marsa Alam with a capacity of 10,000 cubic metres a day.

For residents, the announcement signals that the company intends to treat losses on the network as a legal problem rather than only an engineering one. For hotels and dive centres, whose water demand peaks with occupancy, the practical stake is supply continuity through the season.

Ahram Gate's report attaches no timeframe to the measures.