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Groups question quality of water
By: Ralph Hassall
Published date: 7/7/2003
On June 24, a power outage left Baghdad without water for two days. Electric pumps were unable to work and no water was pumped to the network. Even the toilets in the offices of Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer were unable to flush.
"The Electricity Authority is responsible," said the vice-manager of the Baghdad Water Authority, Mohammed Qassim Hussein. "The situation for us is now normal, but we don't know what they are going to do in the electricity department."
A senior Coalition Joint Task Force spokesman blamed the power failure on looters who attacked an important tower between Baiji power station and Baghdad — a charge confirmed by the Central Electrical Dispatch Centre.
The current security situation has left engineers unable to fix nighttime problems in both water and electricity networks, and at the moment one relies almost totally upon the other.
The water system uses electrical pumps ranging between 400 volts to 11 kV, and the total electricity consumption range is between 50 to 70 MW a day, about five percent of Baghdad's daily power consumption. This doesn't include the electricity required to pump water to the tanks at the top of people’s houses.
Most water is treated at two large water plants. The April 7 project at Rasafa is responsible for western Baghdad, and the Al-Karkh project in Tarmia supplies water for the larger eastern side. Smaller water treatment plants such as the Al-Wahda project, which supplies water to Medical City, are sited around the capital to meet specific area demands.
"We treat the water and supply all water stations in Baghdad," said control supervisor Mohammed Muthena at the Tarmia facility. "The water cut was due to an electrical failure. We have three backup generators, two of eight megawatts and a smaller generator of three megawatts. Unfortunately, none of them work."
The Al-Karkh project is the fifth largest in the world and the largest in the Middle East. It draws 1.5 billion liters of water from the Tigris at Dijla and turns it into 1.1 billion liters of drinkable water each day.
"During the power strike we used our diesel generators for two to three days, but when Tarmia was out of service we couldn't provide all the water," said Abbas Haider, an electrical engineer at Rasafa.
The generators in the Rasafa station are all operational thanks to the help of the International Red Cross. The aid agency is now busy trying to repair the house-sized generators at Tarmia; which in April were so overworked that they blew up.
The Al-Karkh project supplies around 300 million liters per day to the April 7 project and thus the Rasafa region is dependent on Tarmia's operational efficiency.
"If there is no power, water can still flow to the network, but very slowly," Haider said. "During the big power cut, we pumped to Rasafa, but because Tarmia was down we could only operate at half capacity."
Haider — a Rasafa resident himself — said he received water at home during this time. His good fortune is almost certainly due to the repair work carried out by the IRC on the Qanat pumping station in mid-April.
Qanat, which pumps to northern Rasafa, was missiled during the war and received emergency repair work, including a new compressor. But many other districts in Rasafa couldn't receive any water during the power strike because other stations couldn't provide the necessary pressure.
"Water leaves our station through a 1.6 meter diameter pipe that runs along the canal. There are pipes leading from it to various districts. Once the water leaves our station, it is not our problem," Haider said. "It is a network problem."
Short-term backup systems are in place, but these are unable to meet the great demands illustrated by the big power cut. The reservoirs of Tijla and Shimali — both of which are supplied by Tarmia — have tanks that can provide a negligible emergency supply of two to three hours.
Is the water safe to drink?
Cracks in the water pipe network and reduced water pressure allow dirty and clean water to mix. Of 11,000 km of main water pipes in Baghdad, 5,000 km are in need of repair.
To combat the risk of contamination, two tons of chlorine are added to Baghdad's water supply to kill bacteria.
"Our project is 45 kilometers from Baghdad. Chlorine disappears along the pipe, reacting with contaminants. When we pump it in, the water has a residual chlorine level of 1.5 milligrams per liter. When it comes out of the tap, we have a residual level of 0.5 milligrams per liter," Hussein said.The lowest internationally accepted level is 0.5 milligrams per liter.
Between April and May this year, a "rapid quality assessment" of the water in Primary Health Care Centers in both Al-Karkh and Al-Rasafa was carried out by Cooperazione Internazionale, a Greek NGO.
The report stated that in Al-Rasafa, 21 out of 56 samples analyzed were not fit for human consumption. In Al-Karkh 33 out of 54 samples we deemed unsafe. Some chlorine levels were so low they were recorded as zero. In some water sources they found parasites and bacteria.
"Water in the system is severely contaminated, with the analysis showing only half of it is fit for human consumption," according to a COOPI assessment performed in May.
Drops in water pressure are also caused by excessive water usage by Baghdad residents.
Adnan Abdallah, head of planning at the BWA, explained that some residents have been taking large quantities of water from the network using electrical pumps. The water drain causes pressure to drop in the pipes, sucking in dirty water from the outside.
Keeping an eye on chlorine levels is not straightforward, even at the stations where it is added to the water. The gauge that automatically measures the chlorine levels at Tarmia has been broken for some time, but the levels can be monitored in an onsite laboratory. In Rasafa, a laboratory is used to check the level.
"Our people can use the instruments and US soldiers come and work at the lab," said Haider, though he admitted the lab is not staffed on a daily basis.
The supply of chlorine in Iraq is limited and more will be needed in the not-so-distant future.
"I don't know when we will get more, but there is enough that we can work until the end of the year without resupply. If we need more, we will ask the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations to help us," said Youssef Jouad, an electronics engineer at Tarmia.
Fact and rumor
"The Tigris water is clean," said Abdullah, but tales of deliberate and accidental water contamination are common.
"Ziala was just a rumor," he said, referring to allegations of deliberate contamination of the river with radioactive materials. "But we have no ability to check the radio activity percentage anyway the responsible department no longer exists."
The possibility of accidental contamination is high. During the water cleaning process, in addition to chlorine, the river water is treated with a succession of chemicals which separate the water from the mud.
The unwanted muddy sludge is then pumped back into the river along with the chemicals. Like any chemical, in high concentrations they can be harmful to humans and the environment.
The Tarmia plant was only designed to operate until the year 2000 and is now due for overhaul.
A document titled: "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities" produced for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington DC in January 1991, lists causes for concern in Iraqi water quality.
Apart from underlining the difficulties the water treatment industry would suffer under sanctions it reported that drinking the highly mineralized water in the rivers could result in diarrhoea and stones forming inside the body.
COOPI supported this assessment.
"These negative factors give rise to major concerns of outbreaks like watery and bloody diarrhoea, typhoid fever, cholera and hepatitis A. In Baghdad City, COOPI considers the threat of an epidemic is now critical and expected to worsen," the organization stated in a press release.
So far there have only been reports of isolated incidents but summer heat is expected to raise the risk.
On a broader level, the DIA report of 1991 also predicts that: "failing to secure supplies (of water treatment materials) will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease and to certain pure-water-dependent industries becoming incapacitated, including petrochemicals, fertilizers, petroleum refining, electronics, pharmaceuticals, food processing, textiles, concrete construction, and thermal power plants."
Published date: 7/7/2003
Author: Ralph Hassall
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