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The world's longest river has been Egypt's vein of life since time immemorial

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As Egypt succumbs to summer and the temperatures slowly rise to a searing 40 degrees Celsius, four young boys skinny-dip in a canal while their fathers and older brothers labor in the nearby fields. With a carefree spirit that only boys their age can feel, they playfully splash each other with the refreshingly cool water.

Less than 100 meters upstream, however, a crime is being committed that will have a direct impact on these boys for the rest of their lives. A truck carrying raw sewage collected for a minor fee from the local villagers is dumping its contents directly into the irrigation canal.

The River Nile has been Egypt’s ‘vein of life’ since time immemorial. Now facing a variety of threats ranging from Bilharziasis to the dumping of raw sewage, industrial, and agricultural effluents, the longest river in the world has slowly been turned into a death sentence for Egypt ’s millions.

A blend of public awareness and a strong commitment towards living a better life have, however, formed a successful recipe that pays homage to the waters that have been the country's symbol of prosperity and abundance since the times of the Pharaohs.

The establishment of Egypt’s extensive network of irrigation canals began at the time of Muhammed Ali, the Ottoman viceroy in Egypt from 1805 – 1848 AD. Large canals branching from the River Nile send out tributaries that irrigate the fields, while drainage canals receive the agricultural effluent. With few exceptions today, the pesticide-laden, high salinity waters from the drainage canals eventually find their way back into the irrigation canals, without passing through treatment plants.

Gamal Girgis, Director of Al-Monofiya Governorate’s Irrigation Maintenance Programme, explained that this process dilutes the agricultural effluent to a certain extent. But this doesn’t necessarily reduce the harm done to Egypt ’s crops.

The Express Pipe pumps industrial effluent into Al-Khadrawiyah Drainage Canal

In the village of Kafr Arraml in Al-Monofiya Governorate, roughly 60 kilometers north of Cairo, Girgis points to a pipe that is discharging a brownish fluid at full throttle into Al-Khadrawiyah Drainage Canal, filling the air with a fetid, foul smell. Only a few meters upstream, the water appears clear and serene. From that point down, however, the surface of the water is covered with a brownish guck. This pipe, he explained, receives industrial effluent from the nearby Mubarak Industrial Area.

The ‘Express Pipe’, as it is called, was constructed in December 2001 as a joint project between the Egyptian government and local residents in order to localize the disposal of industrial effluent from five of the area's 68 factories. These five factories, which include two carton manufacturers, a tannery, a food processing factory and a factory for producing and refining food oils, produce the most toxic industrial effluent in the area, according to Ibrahim Soliman, Director of Al-Monofiya Governorate's Environmental Department.

A water treatment plant was constructed to treat the effluent water from these five factories, to then be transferred through the 1.5 km long Express Pipe into Al-Khadrawiyah Drainage Canal. Soliman admitted, however, that sometimes the effluent passes untreated into the pipe.

Abdulrahman Shalaby, Director of Environmental Management in Al-Monofiya’s Quesna Center, one of nine administrative centers in the Governorate, further explained that a “mafia” of waste disposal trucks works in the region and collects industrial effluent and raw sewage from industries and homes, dumping their contents where they please. The Express Pipe was one solution to this problem for the Mubarak Industrial Area in particular.

The area's remaining 63 factories, however, continue to use the services of the waste disposal trucks to dump their relatively less-toxic effluents into the areas' irrigation and drainage canals, Soliman added.

Egyptian law requires that any factory producing industrial effluent construct a water treatment plant before it is issued a license to begin work. Operating water treatment plants, however, is very costly in comparison to the relatively cheap waste disposal trucks, Shalaby explained. Consequently, this law is not always implemented.

Shalaby said that sometimes orders "come from above" not to hinder issuing licenses for new factories if they don't construct water treatment plants in advance, as that would be “in conflict with the President’s and Prime Minister’s instructions” to encourage investments in Egypt. Even some factories that do construct water treatment plants only become operational just before "unexpected" inspections, he said.

Barely 10 meters downstream from the Express Pipe’s outlet and immediately adjacent to the drainage canal lies a manual water pump, a common source of groundwater for Egyptian rural dwellers. Shalaby explained that seepage from the polluted Al-Khadrawiyah Drainage Canal into the groundwater in the area has a definite negative impact on its purity. “For safe, potable drinking water, local residents would have to pump water from more than 100 meters deep, and that is just too expensive for them,” he said.

Muhammed Hafiz, a farmer that works in the fields near Al-Khadrawiyah Drainage Canal, said he drinks from the nearby water pump. “I get very thirsty working under the sun in the fields. When I get thirsty, where else can I drink from? Allah will protect me,” he smiled confidently.

Al-Monofiya Governorate has appointed employees to guard some of the area’s canals from the local mafia of waste disposal trucks. Muhammed Yousef works the normal 8am – 2pm shift and has all the truck drivers’ names memorized by heart. During working hours, all he really can do when he discovers a driver dumping his truck’s contents into a canal is inform the local authorities.

Truck owners have their ways around the law, however, and many of them find ways to claim they do not own disposal trucks to begin with. Many of them also employ minors and claim that the children took the truck without their consent, and thus pay a mere fine of 10 Egyptian Pounds.

Yousef, when asked what he does if he comes across a driver during the disposal process after working hours, replied that he totally ignores them. “They’ll shoot me,” he said. “They know we work from 8am – 2pm and normally avoid dumping during those hours. You should come and see what happens after 2pm,” said Yousef with a shudder, referring to the long lines of disposal trucks that start working after 2pm.

Most villages in Al-Monofiya Governorate resort to waste disposal trucks for sewage removal. Shalaby said that amongst Quesna’s 47 villages, only two villages have a developed sanitation system. So for Al-Monofiya’s residents, the "mafia" is their only resort.

Because of the lack of proper sanitation, Shalaby explained that homes in Al-Monofiya use underground septic tanks to collect sewage. These septic tanks are built under the homes, and have no form of insulation between them and the soil. Yet another source of pollution for the region’s groundwater.

Girgis believes that providing the villages with running water without providing them with sanitation was a mistake. This has only increased the amount of sewage in the villages.

As if Egypt ’s waters were not receiving enough pollution, the sides of irrigation and drainage canals in the more populated areas of villages are heaped with solid waste. Umm Muhammed’s house in Shamandeel Village, also in Quesna Center, directly faces the local irrigation canal. “Look at my daughter,” said the 30-year-old farmer's wife, holding up 2-year-old Sara. “Her little body is full of mosquito bites.” Little Sara’s face is red as a fully ripe watermelon from the mosquitoes that infest the garbage heaps in front of her home.

“People have nowhere else to throw their garbage,” said Umm Muhammed, defending her neighbors’ behaviors. “In our home we collect our garbage and burn it in a nearby field, but not everyone can do that,” she said, explaining that transporting large quantities of garbage from one place to another is too costly for some people, especially that no system is available for waste disposal to begin with.

Pollution of the irrigation canals, the crops and the superficial groundwater tables can result in a plethora of diseases for the local villagers. “Although no detailed studies have been performed in Egypt to prove a direct link,” said Dr. Abeer Barakat, Lecturer of Public Health in Cairo University’s Faculty of Medicine, “a full range of water-borne diseases could result from this situation.”

She explained that dumping raw sewage in the irrigation canals can result in diarrhea, the major cause of infant mortality in the developing world and in Egypt. Viral A hepatitis, and of even more danger Viral E hepatitis, can also result from contamination of superficial groundwater. Furthermore, contamination of groundwater with industrial effluent can result in many different forms of cancers including leukemias and hepatomas, which have been on the rise in Egypt in the past few years, noted Barakat.

The Egyptian Water Partnership launched a clean-up campaign and removed solid waste from the sides of this canal

The human population in Egypt is not alone in its plight. Professor of Agriculture in Cairo University, Dr. Abdelhafiz Abdelrahman, explained that the region’s biodiversity as a whole is at stake.

To begin with, irrigation of the land from the drainage canals or from contaminated irrigation canals increases the salinity of the topsoil. This can result in a reduction of crop production by as much as 70 percent, according to Dr. Abdelrahman.

Industrial effluent also poisons the soil and the crops with heavy metals such as lead, molybdenum and aluminum. Alkaline agents such as petrochemicals that reach the irrigation water when women wash their clothes in the canals with soap detergents directly affects the constitution of the topsoil and thus also has a negative affect on the crops, said Abdelrahman.

Nevertheless, attempts are being made to alleviate this desperate situation. The Egyptian Water Partnership was launched in October 2003 to “make water everybody’s business,” said Engineer Amr Abdel-Megeed, the Water Communication Officer at the Partnership’s offices in Cairo.

The Partnership is currently funded by the Government of the Netherlands and has more than 200 members from Egyptian government ministries, academic institutions, local NGOs and private citizens.

The Partnership’s first project was a ‘local action plan’ in Al-Monofiya Governorate. This started with a workshop in Mubarak Industrial Area aiming at creating a better awareness of the water problems in the Governorate. Invitations were extended to businessmen working in the Area, local law enforcement authorities, members of government and parliament, local religious authorities, the press and private citizens.

Members of the Partnership then carried out local clean-up campaigns in problem areas along the canals of four villages in Al-Monofiya. Heaps of solid waste were removed from the canal water, and the sides of some of the canals are currently being dressed with cement blocks to discourage the villagers from throwing their solid wastes along the sides of the canals.

Together with Girgis, Director of Al-Monofiya Governorate’s Irrigation Maintenance Programme, designs are also being made for a practical waste dumpster that can be placed in the villages. Personnel employed by the Governorate will empty the dumpsters and transport the trash to the Governorates’ waste dumps.

Even more encouraging is the experience of the village of Kafr Wahb, also in Al-Monofiya Governorate, and only a few kilometers away from Umm Muhammed’s village of Shamandeel.

In the late 1980s, Kafr Wahb was no different than Shamandeel. Solid waste covered the sides of Umm Wahhab Irrigation Canal that flowed right through the middle of the village. Groundwater logging resulted in seepage to the surface, turning the normally dusty village roads into mud.

Local doctors also noticed that their clinics were receiving increased numbers of patients complaining from gastroenteritis and an increased incidence of typhoid fever. Dr. Magdy Abdel-Maqsood, an internist in the village, said that during the summer months, he would see one to two cases of typhoid fever each day in his clinic.

“Something had to be done,” said Muhammed Abdel-Samee, Director of the Kafr Wahb Society, a local NGO that was specifically set up by the village residents to solve the village’s environmental problems.

Starting solely with donations from the villagers and a minimal government fund, Kafr Wahb Society started first by planting trees alongside the village roads. The trees’ needs for water helped solve seepage of groundwater up to the surface.

Clean-up campaigns were instituted to clean solid waste from in front of homes, from the roads, and from the canals. A small truck was bought by the society and a driver employed to collect garbage on a daily basis and transport it to Quesna Center’s garbage dump.

Society members also made continuous informal visits to their neighbors, in addition to holding several seminars where general awareness was raised about the negative impacts of pollution on health and the environment.

The Society then joined forces with the villagers to pressure the local authorities into helping them cover Umm Wahhab Canal. Today, rather than an open irrigation canal with heaps of garbage on both sides and mosquitoes filling the air, the main road in Kafr Wahb boasts a garden running through the center of the length of the road bursting with colors of green, red and lavender. And, according to Dr. Abdel-Maqsood, he only sees very sporadic cases of typhoid fever now in his clinic.

Encouraged by the affirmative actions taken by the local villagers, the local government also paved all the village roads. Walking through the streets of Kafr Wahb, one might think one was promenading through one of Turkey’s touristic Princess Islands.

Dr. Abdel-Maqsood said that, contrary to conditions prior to the dramatic transformation of the village, girls in the village now refuse to marry young men in neighboring villages. "A sense of 'us and them' has developed in the villagers of Kafr Wahb. Somehow they now feel they are superior to their neighboring villagers. We never intended to instill a sense of superiority in the villagers when we started this programme," sighed Abdel-Maqsood.

When there is a will, there is a way, as the old saying goes. Or better yet, as Allah says in the Noble Qur’an, “Verily never will God change the condition of a people until they change it themselves” (13:11 ).

Nadia El-Awady is IslamOnline.net's Health & Science Page editor. She has a bachelor's degree in medicine from Cairo University and is currently studying for a masters degree in journalism and mass communications at the American University in Cairo. You can reach her at: ScienceTech@islam-online.net.