Maj. Russ Goemaere
2nd Brigade Combat Team PAO
SADR CITY, Iraq - Neglect, war and population growth have taken their toll on Iraq's infrastructure. Sadr City, a slum in Northeast Baghdad, may have suffered more under the former regime then any other city in Iraq.
By the 1990's the sewers in Sadr City were starting to fail and by April 2004, the primary means of sewage removal was evaporation, said J.D. Benoit, project engineer for Sadr City sewer rehabilitation --Washington International/Black & Veatch, International Engineering Design Firms.
Until recently, standing sewage water was the norm in Sadr City. Today the sewage situation in Sadr City has improved. All 15 sewage lift stations are now rehabilitated and pumps are currently taking sewage out of the city to treatment plants in Rustamiyah, said Benoit, who is from Neptune Beach, Florida.
"There is no comparison with the sewage situation of today to last year. Today, the sewers are working better then they have in years and most streets are and will remain sewage free," he said.
According to Benoit, the rehab project took about five months to complete, employed about 100 Iraqis and was funded, at least in part, by monies Saddam Hussein had been hording from the people of Iraq.
The situation is not exactly perfect however. Some citizens in Sadr City will continue to see sewage in the streets; mainly those living in low-lying areas, especially during the hours of peak usage, he said.
The old sewage system was designed to handle a population of about 750,000, while the current population of Sadr City is about two million, said Benoit, who has spent 31 years as an engineer managing projects, including working as the design manager of the Jacksonville, Florida sewer rehabilitation program.
The sewer system, when operating perfectly, will still not handle the capacity of the people that live there, he said.
The goal of the project was not to address the capacity issue but to get the existing system functioning. Besides rehabilitation of the sewer lift stations the project included repair to all sewer breaks, 67 in the city (63 completed, four more will be fixed prior to 1 June), the installation of more than 9000 meters of new sewer pipe, repairs to roads and storm drains to facilitate water and sewer flow, and cleaning of more than 60,000 km of main and lateral lines and thousands of meters of secondary lines, he said.
The Baghdad city government (Amanat), is working on a stand alone pump station for low lying areas to remove standing sewage from the streets as well, he said.
Standing sewage provides a habitat for disease and one benefit of the rehab is that as the volume of standing sewage decreases so should disease rates, said Capt. Nicole Zuena, an Army Preventative Medicine officer in Rusafa.
The heart of a sewage lift station are their pumps, and each station has three pumps. Each pump and its motor were serviced by an Iraqi general contractor with Iraqi machine shops in Baghdad doing much of the work, he said.
The city installed a dedicated power source to the stations to ensure service is not interrupted but also provided a generator to each station to be used in case of emergency, Benoit said.
In the future the city will have to build a system capable of handling the needs of an ever increasing population; in the meantime the rehabilitation project delivers the basic system necessary right now.
"It would not have been possible to build a new sewer system without first repairing the old system. This first step provides a reliable system to pump sewage out of the city, and provides a sound foundation for the Sadr Government to expand upon in the future," he said.
"The system is now up and running and the Amanat has a beginning point to address the long term infrastructure needs of the future," he added.
"The real heroes of the reconstruction effort are the Iraqi staff members who manage the projects every day in situations that are extraordinary dangerous," he concluded.
| Date Taken: |
05.26.2005 |
| Date Posted: |
05.26.2005 13:19 |
| Story ID: |
1949 |
| Location: |
SADR CITY, IQ |
| Web Views: |
71 |
| Downloads: |
13 |
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