IRAQ: leaking sewage affects Fallujah residents’ health

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The sewage system in Fallujah, a city about 60 km west of Baghad, is still not working. Fallujah’s residents depend on underground septic tanks that are leaking waste onto their streets from where it eventually goes to the Euphrates, a main source of drink water for Fallujah as well as for other downstream cities.

 As a result many people have been affected by diarrhoea, tuberculosis, typhoid and other communicable diseases, affirmed Abdul-Sattar Kadhum al-Nawaf, director of the Fallujah general hospital. He said, “I not have specific numbers, but 10-15 percent of patients at the hospital had water or sewage-related diseases”.

After the invasion to IRAK the US started to build a sewage treatment plant that now after withdraw of the American forces will be handed over to a local contractor. The US has promised to provide the necessary funding for its completion but the fact is that since 2004 until 2010  not a single house is connected to the system, according to IRIN.

Sheikh Hameed al-Alwan, head of Fallujah local council said that even if the handing over were successful “unfortunately the plant will work only partially as its backbone, which is the main pipeline that sends all the waste to the main processing unit, will not be constructed because of the lack of funds.”

Other experts affirm that the Fallujah plant is only one of many others abandoned around the country.

related news: U.S. Army Engineers Bring Sewage System to Fallujah, Iraq, American.gov, 13 August 2009.

Source: IRIN, 14 July 2010

Egypt: 40 per cent drink unsafe water

The lack of clean water is one of Egypt’s most urgent problems, a Dutch newspaper reports. Corruption, pollution and wastage are to blame, it says.

When the inhabitants of the small town of Al-Barada (pop. 50,000) in Qalyubia Governorate, north of Cairo, finally got piped drinking water two months ago, it was cause for celebration. Until they discovered that sewage was polluting the water and a thousand people contracted typhoid.

Now Al-Barada again must rely on water tankers. According to lawyer Gamal Yehi, who is representing the interests of the inhabitants, what has happened is a typical result of the corruption that is endemic in the whole of Egypt. Good plans are poorly implemented with inferior materials by unreliable contractors and an incompetent government.

Al-Barada’s groundwater is polluted because the drains, which are supposed to transport wastewater to the river Nile, are blocked with waste.

Every year 550 million cubic metres (m³) of industrial wastewater, 2.5 billion m³ of agricultural wastewater and an unknown amount of sewage flow into the Nile.

Nearly 40 per cent of Egyptians has unsafe water. As a direct result, 17,000 children die every year from diarrhoea and kidney failure rates are among the highest in the world.

At 900 m³ per capita per year, Egypt is below the water poverty line of 1,000 m³ per capita year. And, according to World Bank findings, that figure is expected to fall to “670 cubic metres by 2017 unless policies are implemented to sustainably manage growing demand.”

Egypt’s dependence on the Nile has often lead to tensions with its downstream neighbours. In 1999, the ‘Nile Basin Initiative’ was established among the Nile riparian states to promote cooperative development of the river. Negotiations remain difficult and have recently been stalled for 6 months.

Despite the water crisis, Egyptians continue to waste water. According to the World Bank this is because water tariffs are too low. UN-appointed expert Catarina de Albuquerque reported that the “tariff for drinking water in Egypt is considered one of the lowest tariffs in the world, with over 92 percent of households spending less than 1 percent of their household budget on water and sanitation”.

Inefficient irrigation systems are the reason why most water, 85 per cent, is used by the agricultural sector. Still this is not enough as unequal distribution forces many farmers to use untreated wastewater to grow their crops. In the beginning of August 2009, the minister of Agriculture announced that all fruit and vegetables irrigated with sewage have to be destroyed.

Source: Alexander Weissink, NRC Handelsblad [in Dutch, subscriber-only access], 12 Aug 2009

Iraq, Babil: corruption blamed for cholera outbreak

A deadly outbreak of cholera in [ in Babil province], Iraq is being blamed on a scandal involving corrupt officials who failed to sterilise the local drinking water because they were bribed to buy chlorine from Iran that was long past its expiration date.

[...] The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has appointed a commission of inquiry to find out why ineffective chlorine was being used. He is also refusing to release three officials [from the Badr Organisation, the militia wing of Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI)] under arrest despite demands from the ISCI. In the town of al-Madhatiya, in southern Babil, a councillor involved in buying the chlorine was reportedly released after militiamen connected to ISCI intimidated police into freeing him.

The scandal over the contract is becoming a test case of the Maliki government’s willingness to tackle the pervasive corruption in Iraq [and its] ability to exercise central control over ISCI and parties which have been hitherto dominant outside Baghdad.

[...] An Iraqi government official, who did not want his name published, said the Health Ministry bought $11m (£6.4m) worth of chlorine from Iran for use in the provinces of Babil, Diwaniyah and Kerbala. [...] In the latter two provinces, officials noticed that the chlorine was old [...] and refused to use it. But in Babil the chlorine was put in the fresh water supply stations at al-Madhatiyah, al-Hashimiyah and al-Qasim, south-east of the provincial capital, al-Hillah. Soon 222 people were confirmed as having cholera in Babil, in a total of 420 cases of whom seven have died.

For updates of cholera in Iraq go the WHO web site

Source: Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, 10 Oct 2008