{"id":13515,"date":"2018-09-01T16:26:11","date_gmt":"2018-09-01T16:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13515"},"modified":"2018-09-01T16:26:11","modified_gmt":"2018-09-01T16:26:11","slug":"water-pollution-lays-waste-to-iraqs-southern-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13515","title":{"rendered":"Water pollution lays waste to Iraq\u2019s southern region"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nPARIS, BAGHDAD: Younes Selim clutches his stomach in pain at a hospital in southern Iraq, one of thousands to fall ill in a region flush with oil but desperately short of drinking water.<\/p>\n

\nSitting in an emergency ward in Basra, along with patients on drips suffering from severe diarrhea, Selim said he had no choice but to drink from the tap despite knowing the risk.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe only give mineral water to our three children, but my wife and I often have to drink tap water,\u201d he said, waiting for one of the hospital\u2019s overwhelmed doctors to treat him.<\/p>\n

\nSince Aug. 12, \u201cmore than 17,000 patients have been admitted for diarrhea, stomach pains and vomiting,\u201d said Ryad Abdel Amir, head of Basra\u2019s health department.<\/p>\n

\nHe said that in his 11 years in the job he has never before seen such a crisis, which has been exacerbated by a lack of public services and rising prices.<\/p>\n

\nUmm Haydar, a market vendor in the port city, said she also struggles to provide drinking water for her family of 30.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cA thousand liters cost 20,000 dinars ($17) and once we have all drunk and washed the children, in half an hour there\u2019s nothing left,\u201d the grandmother said.<\/p>\n

\nUntil recently, the same amount of water cost 5,000 dinars.<\/p>\n

\nWhile Iraq\u2019s water shortages are not just confined to Basra, the region suffers from a toxic mix of polluted and salty water, dismal public services, power cuts and open sewers.<\/p>\n

\nThe province has abundant energy resources and Iraq\u2019s only stretch of coastline, but it is also heavily populated and has creaking infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\nIt has been shaken by weeks of protests over the lack of basic services, despite government pledges to pump billions of dollars into the neglected south.<\/p>\n

\nPrime Minister Haider Abadi acknowledges that water salinity has been increasing while chlorine concentration has been declining for decades.<\/p>\n

\nThis year the crisis is coupled with a drop in rainfall, according to the premier.<\/p>\n

\nBasra sits on the Shatt Al-Arab waterway formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which flow into the Gulf.<\/p>\n

\nRepeated wars and dams that have damaged the ecosystem mean that salt water has taken over and now reaches 300 km upriver from the sea.<\/p>\n

\nWastewater produced by the country of 38 million people is also poisoning the Tigris and Euphrates.<\/p>\n

\nIn Basra, sewage flows into open canals that join the Shatt Al-Arab, mixing with industrial pollution from the oil industry as well as from neighboring Iran.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe Shatt Al-Arab has become a dump and for 15 years the treatment plants have not been renovated,\u201d said Faycal Abdallah of Iraq\u2019s Governmental Council for Human Rights.<\/p>\n

\nHis organization wants the province to be declared a disaster zone so that it can benefit from special funds and fresh water from reservoirs upstream.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe province is supposed to get 75 cubic meters of water per second, but only 59 cubic meters per second really comes in\u201d with provinces upstream taking water for agriculture, he said.<\/p>\n

\nMore fresh water would repel the salt water back toward the Gulf.<\/p>\n

\nFish farmer Jassem Mahmoud fears for his future after losing all 50 million of his juvenile fish and sinking into debt.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt\u2019s the worst season… and surely the last year for us\u201d said Mahmoud, after 25 years in the industry.<\/p>\n

\nOn the edge of nearby ponds, hundreds of dead fish rot on sun-baked earth, while others float on water drawn from the nearby Tigris. Kazem Al-Ghilani uses a device to test the water of his pond.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe salinity is 12 milligrams per kilo of water. In normal times, it varies between 1 and 1.5 milligrams,\u201d the agricultural engineer said.<\/p>\n

\nThe prime minister says his government is not to blame and insists that water maintenance is the \u201cresponsibility of the provinces.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nBack in the emergency room, Abdel Amir fears cooler autumn weather could significantly worsen the situation.<\/p>\n

\nThe combination of salt water with a very low chlorine concentration and milder weather will be the ideal breeding ground for cholera, he warned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PARIS, BAGHDAD: Younes Selim clutches his stomach in pain at a hospital in southern Iraq, one of thousands to fall ill in a region flush with oil but desperately short of drinking water. Sitting in an emergency ward in Basra, along with patients on drips suffering from severe diarrhea, Selim said he had no choice…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":13516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}