Morocco's dams were 66.57% full on 23 October 2026, more than double the 31.72% reported for the same date a year earlier. They held 11,335.61 million m³ against a capacity of 20.8 billion m³ across 156 dams.
From drought to flood in six months
The recovery came fast and at a cost. Reservoirs stood at 37.4% in July 2025, after a drought that had pushed the main dams down to 32.8% in February 2022. Then the rain arrived. Flash floods in Safi on 14 December 2025 killed 37 people. In February 2026 more than 150,000 people were evacuated across 11 northern provinces, and the Oued El Makhazine dam reached 141% of its capacity.
The average keeps falling
Full reservoirs mask a structural decline. Mean annual surface inflow was 22.26 billion m³ in 1945–1978 and 15.04 billion m³ in 1979–2018, about a third lower. Water availability is about 600 m³ per person a year, against 2,560 m³ in 1960. The UNDP projects rainfall 15% to 25% lower by 2050.
Storage is silting up
The dams themselves are losing room. Siltation had removed 1.4 billion m³ of capacity by 2010, and about 20 reservoirs are projected to be fully silted by 2040. Fourteen large dams are being built or raised, with a combined capacity above 5 billion m³, against a target of 24 billion m³ of national dam capacity by 2027.
A wet year buys time
Groundwater abstraction of about 5 billion m³ a year runs 28% above the exploitable level, and seawater desalination, at 410 million m³ a year of capacity in July 2026, is still small next to the dams.
Who runs Morocco's water, which projects are slipping, what water costs against what customers pay, and which milestones to follow into 2027 are set out in the full profile. The full report, Morocco Country Intelligence Profile, is available for USD 99 at https://ourfuturewaterintelligence.com/reports/morocco-country-intelligence-profile. For a free overview, see https://ourfuturewaterintelligence.com/countries/morocco.