It was almost 3:00 pm when 42 year-old housewife and mother of five, Attiyat Abdul Mohsen, turned on the water faucet in her home yet nothing came out. She was forced to ask her neighbor for a jerry can of water to cook for her husband, a taxi driver in the Nile coastal city of Rashid.
Their family has not had regular water services since mid-January and when they went to the water company, officials told them there was a malfunction in the water network. They told Mohsen it would be repaired in at least 12 hours.
It was almost 3:00 pm when 42 year-old housewife and mother of five, Attiyat Abdul Mohsen, turned on the water faucet in her home yet nothing came out. She was forced to ask her neighbor for a jerry can of water to cook for her husband, a taxi driver in the Nile coastal city of Rashid.
Their family has not had regular water services since mid-January and when they went to the water company, officials told them there was a malfunction in the water network. They told Mohsen it would be repaired in at least 12 hours.
But 12 hours extended to 24 and her family had to borrow three more jerry cans of water from the neighbors. Mohsen told her children they would have to ration out their water use. After a while, the water returned and she rushed to the main water faucet in her home.
Rusty color
Once she turned on the faucet, Mohsen was shocked to see that the water had a rusty color and a strange and strong smell.
“I discussed the matter of the water’s strange smell and color with my neighbors and one of them told me that she suffered a kind of allergy and itchiness after putting her hand under the water,” remembered Mohsen. “After an hour of waiting, I went back home and turned on the faucet again but the water was not any better.”
Complaints and gatherings
After two days of suffering, Mohsen went to the Drinking Water Company in Rashid. She was surprised to find dozens of people there carrying samples of water in their hands with colors varying between light yellow and dark brown.
“Addressing this great gathering, the Drinking Water Company officials said there was nothing wrong with the water. But when we asked them to drink the samples we were holding, they refused and claimed it was not drinking water,” she explained.
Ahmad Samari, lawyer and Head of the Defense of Freedoms Committee at the Bar Association of Rashid, said the problem began on January 14, 2013 when the water network was cut off at the Rashid, Mahmudiya and Adco water centers—which has a combined population of 1,200,000.
The cut was due to the contamination of water with toxic ammonia gas, which led to dead fish floating in the Nile. The residents thought that some outside parties poisoned the Nile and they went to the Water Company to submit their complaints.
No response whatsoever
The protests of the people were ignored by the officials who allegedly refused to acknowledge the existence of a ‘catastrophe’. They even accused the residents of spreading rumors, according to Samari.
Residents of Rashid then gathered in front of the city council on February 2 2014, holding up water samples, but again officials denied the problem.
Consequently, the residents submitted complaints accusing the prime minister, Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources, Governor of Buhayrah, Heads of the Drinking Water Companies in Buhayrah and Rashid and Head of Rashid’s city council of negligence and endangering the lives of citizens, according to Samari who was in charge of submitting these complaints.
“The residents of Rashid are using water that is unfit for human use or consumption, which caused the spread of diseases and forced the majority of people to resort to buying bottled water. Despite all attempts at addressing the concerned officials to resolve the problem, no one moved a muscle,” according to one of the submitted complaints.
In response, the Public Prosecution formed a five-member-committee including the Nile protection Apparatus, Environment Protection Apparatus, General Authority for Drinking Water and Sanitation, General Authority for Fisheries and the Department of Health to inspect the water and advise its suitability for drinking, said Samari.
“If the water is proven to be contaminated, a report must be submitted explaining the causes,” Samari said. “Although the decision to formulate the committee was issues on 30 January, it has not been executed yet.”
Deputy Governor calls residents “thugs”
With no solution, residents’ tempers began to flare. Walid Kafrawi, spokesperson of the revolutionary forces in Rashid, said residents seized the opportunity when Nadia Abdo, Deputy Governor of Buhayrah visited Rashid city during celebrations held at the University of Damanhur, to raise their complaints to her about the water contamination.
Kafrawi insisted the water was clean so the residents asked her to drink the samples they held. She reacted by accusing them of being thugs, which led the thirsty citizens to corner her before she managed to escape. Therefore, they filed a new complaint accusing her of defamation and negligence. They also raised several banners at the city entrance with opposing statements against her and demanded her dismissal and ban from entering the city.
“A few weeks later, the Water Company decided to check the water,” said Kafrawi, “and conducted an analysis, the result of which was tragic, according to an official source at the city council.”
The analysis revealed that a 14.5% concentration of ammonia gas and 3% concentration of phosphate, in addition to high percentages of colonic bacteria were discovered in the water, making it unfit for human use. Therefore, the Water Company chlorinated the water to remove the color and smell of ammonia, but it is still undrinkable.
A crisis of the poor
Mohsen’s husband earns EGP 1200 driving a taxi, and if the water crisis continues they’ll have to spend too much of their small salary on bottled water, which has dropped in price from EGP 3.5 to EGP 2 due to the persistence of the crises.
Mohsen and her family use five large bottles of the water on a daily basis, which costs her family EGP 10 daily and an average of EGP 300 every month. They have resorted to borrowing money to pay for their water needs. And some sellers even put expired water on the market.
Many poor people boil the polluted water believing it will be purified. Mohsen tried this once herself, but her children suffered diarrhea in addition to allergic reactions, as well as suffocation when bathing in the contaminated water.
Water transport vehicles
The results of the analysis conducted by the Water Company did not provide any final solution for the crisis. In an attempt to ease the crisis, Mustafa Hadhoud, Governor of Buhayrah decided to stop a number of the infected water stations including Edfina and Jediehat Rashid in addition to Mahmudiya and Fishain in order to contain the contamination.
He also advised to increase the pumping of water inside the drinking water stations in Damanhur and Hbrakhitt to push the water to the villages of west and south Mahmudiya as an alternative to the water of Fisha, Mahmudiya and Edfina stations.
Hadhoud admitted the existence of a crisis at the three stations and referred the problem of the low water levels in Rashid and its branching canals, in addition to the spread of illegal fish cages that have been created on the course of Rashid network, which increased the concentration of ammonia and other contaminates in the Nile and main canals before reaching the Water Company stations on Rashid branch and Mahmudiyah Canal.
Khalid Hussein, Head of Drinking Water Board of Directors in Buhayrah, said to confront the contamination of water at Mahmudiya, Rashid and Edco, new water was pumped in Rashid and the polluted water was expelled from the aqueduct of Edfina in addition to increasing the flow of water and its quantity from Rashid to Mahmudiyah canal. Sources at the Water Company in Buhayrah confirmed that five Compact drinking water stations out of nine were stopped in Mahmudiya in addition to Edfina and Jedieh stations in Rashid. He added that the cause of pollution is the high proportion of ammonia in the water that has reached 14% in some areas.
Serious diseases
Effects of dissolved ammonia in water include kidney failure and cirrhosis of the liver, warned Yakout Sanusi, professor of biochemistry at the University of Banha, stressing that boiling water releases vapors that may lead to suffocation and death.
He also underlined that the effect of the high proportion of ammonia in the water does not appear instantly in humans, but rather has a cumulative effect on the liver and kidneys leading to cirrhosis and kidney failure in addition to skin irritation, allergic reactions and vomiting. He added that ammonia has dangerous effects on fish where the high proportion of ammonia causes the death of large amounts of fish due to the reaction of ammonia with oxygen in the water, which then drowns the fish.
Concerns and fears
Attiyat Abdul Mohsen said the steam of the bathroom heater caused one of her children due to suffocate due to the high percentage of chlorine used by the water company in the treatment of the water. Sometimes Mohsen and her husband drink from the water tap despite contamination and abdomen pains in order to leave the clean water for their children.
She added that it was painful for her to ask her child not to drink all the water in the bottle as it was the last one they had.
“All we are asking for is to get a glass of clean water that would not result in the death of our children. This is our right.”
