Alexandria's Groundwater Line Creeps Inland, House by House

ALEXANDRIA — The saltwater does not arrive as a wave here; it arrives as a taste. The Oceanic & Atmospheric Assembly reported this week that the freshwater lens beneath the western delta has retreated another 400 meters inland over the past year, pushing the brackish boundary under neighborhoods that drew sweet well-water a decade ago. For Nadia Farag, who runs a tea house three streets from the corniche, the number is a bill: her ground-tap turned undrinkable in spring, and she now buys trucked water at four times the metered rate. "The sea is coming up through the floor," she said, "not over the wall." The Assembly stresses the intrusion sits within its long-range delta models and is not a sudden event. But models describe an average; Farag lives at an edge. Across the delta, the agency estimates several hundred thousand households now sit above brackish groundwater — a coastline redrawn quietly, one kitchen at a time.