The Rivers of Babylon are Dying
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/science/earth/13shatt.html?hp
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The Shatt al Arab, the river that flows from the biblical site of the Garden of Eden to the Persian Gulf, has turned into an environmental and economic disaster that Iraq’s newly democratic government is almost powerless to fix.
Withered by decades of dictatorial mismanagement and then neglect, by drought and the thirst of Iraq’s neighbors, the river formed by the convergence of the Tigris and the Euphrates no longer has the strength the keep the sea at bay.
The encroaching salt has so polluted supplies of drinking water that the government has scrambled to dig canals from the north that bypass the Shatt — Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki inaugurated one ahead of this year’s national election — and to truck in fresh water to much of the region. Anyone who can afford it avoids tap water, which is salty enough to leave spots on a glass when it dries.
Iraq’s acceptable level of salt in the Shatt’s fresh water was 1,500 parts per million; last year the level reached 12,000.
Faris Jassim al-Imara, a chemist at the University of Basra’s Marine Science Center, said he had recorded levels as high as 40,000 parts per million, as well as heavy metals and other pollutants flowing from the north and from Iran’s oil refinery at Abadan, where enormous pipes steadily discharge waste water.
“It’s killing the river and the people,” he said. Here in Siba, across the river from Abadan, the salt water is slowly destroying agriculture, the primary source of income other than oil.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/science/earth/13shatt.html?hp
Withered by decades of dictatorial mismanagement and then neglect, by drought and the thirst of Iraq’s neighbors, the river formed by the convergence of the Tigris and the Euphrates no longer has the strength the keep the sea at bay.
The encroaching salt has so polluted supplies of drinking water that the government has scrambled to dig canals from the north that bypass the Shatt — Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki inaugurated one ahead of this year’s national election — and to truck in fresh water to much of the region. Anyone who can afford it avoids tap water, which is salty enough to leave spots on a glass when it dries.
Iraq’s acceptable level of salt in the Shatt’s fresh water was 1,500 parts per million; last year the level reached 12,000.
Faris Jassim al-Imara, a chemist at the University of Basra’s Marine Science Center, said he had recorded levels as high as 40,000 parts per million, as well as heavy metals and other pollutants flowing from the north and from Iran’s oil refinery at Abadan, where enormous pipes steadily discharge waste water.
“It’s killing the river and the people,” he said. Here in Siba, across the river from Abadan, the salt water is slowly destroying agriculture, the primary source of income other than oil.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/science/earth/13shatt.html?hp
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- groups:
- Co-Evolution
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- tags:
- Iraq, Water Crisis, Tigris River
