AGHDAD, Iraq, June 18 — It was an engineering success on the order of stringing the first cables for the Brooklyn Bridge or coaxing the first glimmer of starlight through some giant telescope to unravel the structure of the universe. Posted on 06/18/2004 9:16:30 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
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AGHDAD, Iraq, June 18 — It was an engineering success on the order of stringing the first cables for the Brooklyn Bridge or coaxing the first glimmer of starlight through some giant telescope to unravel the structure of the universe.
But when it occurred late last month, the achievement remained cloaked in absolute secrecy, marked only by a quiet celebration among participants who may remain forever unknown to history.
Raw sewage was treated in Baghdad.
The stream of treated water that eventually found its way into the Tigris River was hardly more than a trickle, roughly 20 million gallons a day from a city that produces raw sewage at something like 10 times that rate or more. But the accomplishment is all but epoch-making in a city where the sewage plants are in such disrepair that for the last 10 to 15 years, every drop of that muck was poured untreated into the river, fouling everything from boat landings to drinking water systems downstream.
Successes like this one were just what Congress envisioned when it appropriated billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq, hoping the improvements would convince Iraqis of America's good will.
But for what those in charge of the work, the United States Agency for International Development and its major contractor, Bechtel, curity reasons, the sewage breakthrough remained secret. A reporter from The New York Times agreed not to give the location of the plant in exchange for receiving a general description of the work from the engineers involved. The reporter also agreed not to use the names of the engineers and to print no photographs of their faces.
A.I.D. and Bechtel say the breakthrough occurred in a dangerous part of Baghdad where any publicity could make the project a target for saboteurs, who struck again on Wednesday, killing a senior Oil Ministry official and damaging another oil pipeline. That argument and the bizarre concept of a secret sewage project have generated frustration among some of the engineers, who say secrecy defeats the original purpose of the work.
This is the first sewage treatment in Baghdad in 15 years but "we can't get the word out," said one American government engineer on the project. To the suggestion that publicity could lead to bombings and the like, the engineer said, "Well, guess what — we're getting bombed anyway."
Just three days before, he said, terrorists had lobbed a concussion grenade at a car carrying an electrical engineer working on one of the three huge sewage treatment plants that are being rehabilitated in Baghdad. (Two of them have not yet started processing sewage.)
Of course, sewage plants are hard to hide, a fact that complicates the effort to keep them secret from those who would like to destroy them. Probably not by accident, though, they do tend to be on less populated outskirts. And except for the big tanks where anaerobic bacteria munch away on sludge, there are few structures that poke very far above the perimeter walls.
To date, Congress has set aside roughly $24 billion for rebuilding Iraq's electrical, water, sewage, oil, transportation and security installations, among other areas, according to an analysis by the George Soros-backed Iraq Revenue Watch.
In a desert land where water is society's lifeblood, the need for the work is unquestioned. Ghazi J. Maghak, 68, a civil engineer whose mind is a vast compendium of detail on the Baghdad sewers, which he has worked on for three decades, said in an interview that there were 4,000 miles of sewer lines, most overstressed and falling apart.
Parts are receiving a thousand times more waste than they were designed for, creating the rivers of sewage that stream through the streets in many neighborhoods, Mr. Maghak said. And under Saddam Hussein, who was no friend to civil infrastructure that did not have a palace sitting on it, repairs were undertaken capriciously and always with the dark threat of punishment.
Those crumbling sewer lines then feed Baghdad's three great sewage plants, which have fared even worse. In the last decade or two they became so decrepit that engineers simply shunted the raw sewage through jury-rigged pipes and dumped it into the Tigris with no treatment whatever. Then, after the American-led invasion last year, the plants were looted to the ground.
Left behind were grotesquely dysfunctional graveyards of sludge and ransacked buildings. Initial work to clean them up, largely with shovels and wheelbarrows, began late last year.
A trip approved by Bechtel and the development agency to one of the plants on June 13 gave some insight into the parlous security situation that has given rise to the secrecy. As a car carrying a reporter, an interpreter and a driver approached the plant, it became apparent that a huge bomb had gone off a short time before — probably intended for a line of cars, now charred and crumpled, that had been waiting for gasoline in front of a nearby station.
A group of agitated Iraqi civilians tried to direct the car away, then relented, before blue-shirted Iraqi police officers waved their handguns to get the car to stop again. Finally, heavily armed American soldiers who were clustered around an armored vehicle told the driver to go through.
Inside the plant, the big round clarification tanks had been cleaned out and were ready for sewage, new filtration screens were soon to be put in place and augurlike screw pumps were lifting sample sewer water into the air for its ride through the system.
At one point a sand-blasting machine was suddenly turned on somewhere and two of the people in the party, including the American government engineer, hit the deck, thinking it was a mortar attack.
The plant was all quite impressive, but somehow unsatisfying, since nothing was actually being treated yet. The company and the development agency said the other plants were in areas too dangerous to visit.
But the next day the First Cavalry Division, which is charged with guarding sites like the sewage plants around Baghdad, agreed to transport two visitors to another plant, using a three-vehicle convoy laden with weaponry.
Inside, under the blazing afternoon sun, was a scene that perhaps only the combination of occupied Iraq and a secret sewage plant could produce — a Turkish site manager who did not seem to speak either English or Arabic, Iraqi engineers with strict orders not to show anyone the treated sewage without permission from the front office, and a compound mostly deserted except for some low-level staff members and managers and the few engineers.
After some hasty cellphone calls, the permission came through. Accompanied closely by the soldiers, their rifles at the ready, the visitors walked past the blue-gray murk spilling over a ledge in clarification ponds, above scum-covered holding pools toward three little concrete canals that merged at one corner of the site.
There, near an empty guard tower and some sparse plants called adgal, was a strange but tangible glint of hope on the outskirts of Baghdad: treated sewage, swirling around a corner and out of sight into a pair of mismatched tunnels on its way to the Tigris.
Of course, it's in their least-read Saturday edition... And they can't really report on much due to the security situation... But at least it's a start...
I understand there is going to be a fund raising drive to buy warm clothing for hell.
Well, um...THAT is an "interesting" source?! Sheesshh.
These people are brave.
Great article - thanks for posting it!
The Bechtel Corporation may get a lot of flack, but they do a first-rate job on things like this. No wonder their engineers were irked at not getting the publicity they deserved.
D
A Shiite treatment plant, fancy that...
i would like to take this opportunity to congratulate senator kerry on his upcoming nomination.also,thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak my mind. i lost my job this past year. when clinton was president,i worked in a prosperous enterprise and was doing quite well.but in this last year, we had to close operations. far worse, i lost two of my sons in bush's evil war in iraq.they gave their lives for this country,and for what? my pain of losing my sons is indescribable. while it is trival next to the loss of my sons,i regret to say that i also lost my homes as well. i simply have nothing left.
i am a senior citizen with various medical problems. i'm not in a position where i can begin a new career. i was reduced to the point where i am homeless,all because of president bush. and,when i came to the attention of the authorites, did they have any compassion for my misfortune and ailments? no, i was arrested.
if i had any money left,i would donate it to the demorcratic party. if al gore had been elected in 2000, i guarantee you,i would have still have a job,a home and most importantly my sons.
regards,
saddam hussein
Bump for later.
:-(
Important achievement.........
Or how one gets Iraq promoted to Third World status.
WOSG,....I gotta give ya BIG BTTT on your post!! Excellent!!
Baghdad continues to rebuild and expand dual-use infrastructure that it could divert quickly to CW production. The best examples are the chlorine and phenol plants at the Fallujah II facility. Both chemicals have legitimate civilian uses but also are raw materials for the synthesis of precursor chemicals used to produce blister and nerve agents. Iraq has three other chlorine plants that have much higher capacity for civilian production; these plants and Iraqi imports are more than sufficient to meet Iraq's civilian needs for water treatment. Of the 15 million kg of chlorine imported under the UN Oil-for-Food Program since 1997, Baghdad used only 10 million kg and has 5 million kg in stock, suggesting that some domestically produced chlorine has been diverted to such proscribed activities as CW agent production.
Though the sanctions have kept Iraq from importing items essential for maintaining its water sewage and sanitation system, including chlorine, the tiny elite in Baghdad smuggles in chlorine for their private swimming pools. There has been a boom in private pool construction in Baghdad during the embargo.
Also, from Decisive Force: Strategic Bombing in the Gulf War by Richard G.Davis (1996): "The electrical attacks proved extremely effective... The loss of electricity shut down the capital's water treatment plants and led to a public health crisis from raw sewage dumped in the Tigris River."
LOL
The Times has an affinity for reporting on bull----
So the sewer piece was a natural.
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