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The sewage is about to hit the fan in Gaza
Each day of electricity cuts increases the prospect that Palestinian Water Authority engineer Saadi Ali's nightmare will come true. Ali, in charge of the North Gaza Emergency Sewage Treatment Project, lives in constant fear of a recurrence of the calamity that took place in March 2007 when the dirt embankments surrounding a temporary infiltration pond of sewage water collapsed, and the effluent water that flooded the nearby Bedouin village of Umm al-Nasser led to the drowning deaths of five people. About 1,000 people were evacuated from their homes, animals died and considerable damage was caused to property and crops. The temporary infiltration basin was originally built to lower the level of water in the nearby giant sewage lake that has slowly developed. Last November, the PWA, which is directly accountable to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, was slated to empty the lake and transfer the sewage water to new infiltration basins seven kilometers to the southeast away. However, the initial operation of the emergency project's pumping station has been delayed for over a month now. Ever-lengthening electricity cuts, the result of Israel reducing the fuel supply to the bare minimum both to Gaza and its power plant, have severely hampered the project's activation. Ali and the team of contractors and laborers working with him feel powerless in the face of the following threatening facts. The artificial sewage lake has a total area of 350 dunams that is one kilometer long and contains 2.5 million cubic meters of effluent water with depth ranging from eight to 13 meters. The site of the lake overlooks an inhabited agricultural area of over 1,000 dunams with a population of 10,000. The dirt embankments surrounding the lake could collapse for a variety of reasons: heavy rainfall, stray Qassam rockets, mortars launched by the Israel Defense Forces, exchanges of gunfire. The long, frequent electric power cuts are much more than simply "inconvenient." They are causing serious environmental harm that will also affect Gaza's Israeli neighbors. The flooding of the region surrounding the sewage lake would not only endanger the lives of many people, it would also inflict damage on fields and fill the open irrigation wells with sludge that would immediately contaminate the aquifer. "About a month ago, the electric power cuts lasted between six and eight hours, and we tried to navigate our way around them," Ali said in a telephone conversation with Haaretz on Monday from Gaza. "Today, every electric power cut lasts 12 hours, and the power is then supplied for six hours. Since there is a shortage of natural gas for cooking, many people use electricity - when it is available - and the current is too weak to operate the [pumping station's] machines." Another reason for the delay is the absence of the expert responsible for the operation of the new electric power system. He is a resident of Bethlehem and all the requests that he be granted an entry permit to Gaza have so far been denied. Posted by: Fred 2008-12-25 |
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