damage to the infrastructure: water supply
the problem of chlorine [excerpt]
David Sole
The images from the previous day were still in my mind. Hundreds of babies and children shrunken and dying at the Saddam Pediatric Hospital in Baghdad, most of them stricken with gastroenteritis and amebic dysentery, both water-borne diseases. Now we were walking through the April 7 Water Treatment Plant just north of the city. The plant was providing almost half the fresh water for a city of over five million people. Why were the hospitals so full? Perhaps the answer lay here.
Showing us around was Ferhan Mohson, the plant shift supervisor, and Dr. A. Al-Dabbagh, Assistant President of Baghdad University, an expert in water engineering. The facility was not that different from any fresh-water plant in Detroit, where I work for the Water and Sewerage Department. The huge pumps were roaring as they lifted water from the Tigris River. Settling tanks slowed the water and let solids sink to the bottom. Huge filtration tanks further reduced the contamination.
But unlike the procedures normally followed, this plant was not adding chlorine in the early stages of purification. "Importation of chlorine is restricted severely by the sanctions," explained our hosts. "As a poisonous gas, they say it can be used for military purposes." The chlorine now allowed into the country comes by way of UNICEF. But it is not enough.
excerpt from CHALLENGE TO GENOCIDE
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