[NYTr] US struggles to restore drinking water to Iraqis

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Steven Robinson - activ-l


McClatchy Newspapers - November 18, 2007
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/21753.html

U.S. struggles to restore drinking water to Iraqis

By Bobby Caina Calvan

Al-Sadiyah, Iraq -- The water tankers arrive twice a week in this
parched village surrounded by fallow fields stretching into the
horizon. The town's wells still pump out a flow, but few villagers dare
drink from it unless in desperation.

At the gate of Kayria Fayhan's home, 250 gallons of the trucked-in cargo
fill a metal tank for cooking and drinking, sometimes for washing up if
itching from the groundwater becomes unbearable.

Even the "clean" water from the tanker is a gamble on some weeks. "They
say the water is clean, but sometimes the water is green," Fayhan said.
"Sometimes, there's rust floating in it."

Despite the fact that Iraq and U.S. officials have made water projects
among their top priorities, the percentage of Iraqis without access to
decent water supplies has risen from 50 percent to 70 percent since the
start of the U.S.-led war, according to an analysis by Oxfam
International last summer. The portion of Iraqis lacking decent
sanitation was even worse -- 80 percent.

Now, though, some U.S. officials think they're about to make progress.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, using more than $1 billion in
reconstruction funds, is building massive water treatment plants in
urban areas, including one in the slums of Baghdad's Sadr City.

Construction crews over the last three years, working there under heavy
guard, have constructed a treatment plant that will produce an
additional 25 million gallons of drinking water daily, enough for
nearly 200,000 people. Miles of new water lines are also being
installed, allowing 2 million of Sadr City's residents to tap directly
into the new plant and existing water supplies.

In Nasiriyah, a $277 million water treatment facility is to be handed
over to Iraqis in December. It is billed as the largest facility of its
kind in Iraq and is designed to provide clean drinking water for an
estimated half-million people in southern Iraq.

As many as 1,500 water treatment and sewage projects have been
completed, with 150 more in progress, according to the corps of
engineers.

The aim is to deliver an additional 290 million gallons of water daily
to the Iraqi population, and nearly three-fourths of that goal has been
achieved, according to the corps. "From my travels, I think it's really
getting better," said U.S. Navy Capt. Tom Brovarone, who is on
assignment in Iraq for the corps.

Oxfam officials remain cautious.

"It's a bit premature to see how these projects will impact the
situation," said Manal Omar, a regional program manager for Oxfam in
the Middle East, who questioned whether the security situation will
allow the new projects to take hold.

Electricity, which is needed to power pumps, continues to be unreliable
in many parts of Iraq, causing some taps to go dry because pumping
stations and water treatment plants can't operate.

In many parts of Iraq, residents without water must rely on costly
bottled water or go searching for a tap to fill plastic cans. Even in
Baghdad, especially in its poorest areas, it is not unusual to see
women dragging the heavy cans or children splashing water-filled
buckets through dusty streets.

When a U.S. Army platoon arrived last week in al-Sadiyah with two
flatbeds heaped with boxes and boxes of bottled water, villagers rushed
to grab their share, all the while complaining that it was not enough.

"On that hierarchy of needs, water rises to the top," said Maj. Joe
Sowers, a spokesman for Forward Operating Base Hammer, a U.S. military
installation east of Baghdad, where water-bearing platoons fan out for
humanitarian missions in outlying villages.

"We can live without electricity, but we cannot live without water,"
said Fayhan, the woman from al-Sadiyah.

While water itself is not in short supply -- the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers, which run the length of the country, have abundant flows --
much of it is not drinkable because of pollution and high salinity.

"A bad taste, a very bad taste," said Hasan Dawood, a sheik from
al-Zatia, describing the water that comes from the tainted town wells.
"I can't give a better description... It's like drinking tea without
sugar. It's very bad."

In al-Sadiyah, a community of about 100 families, the water coming out
of taps looks clean enough, but it coats the palate with a thin, slick
brine that sometimes smells sour.

Villagers can't say what's in it, but they know what it can leave in the
stomach -- that unsettling feeling some U.S. soldiers refer to as
"Saddam's revenge."

A recent outbreak of cholera across Iraq has killed at least 14 people
and infected 3,300 others with an intestinal ailment spread by dirty
water.

Some families with vehicles buy bottled water while in Baghdad. Others
wait for the water tanker to deliver free supplies. Bottled water from
the U.S. military is too infrequent to be relied upon.

"We go from village to village, when we can," said Capt. Pat Moffett.
"We give them water to drink, but we also have to give them water to
farm, so they can work."

Villagers confirm the need for full irrigation canals to sprout new
crops of watermelon, cucumbers, tomatoes, wheat and rice, which in many
areas haven't been farmed in several seasons.

McClatchy Newspapers 2007