Between clinging onto the past and looking forward to a comfortable modern life, argues Nader Habib, the residents of Esna have yet to endure years of unrest Once you set foot in the Upper Egyptian city of Esna, you cannot help noticing its antiquated charm. It cannot be called a city in the modern sense, for its simple houses and narrow streets evoke village life. But it also presents the modern urban planner eager to modernise it with one serious problem or two. Located 33 kms south of Luxor, the city boasts one of the most venerable temples of antiquity. Now, a new dam has caused its water table to rise too close to the surface, threatening both antiquities and residential housing. At the same time, its inhabitants complain that a new sewerage project has brought them more grief, than relief. According to Ahmed El-Sinusi, a resident, the sewerage problem emerged only recently, following the building of the dam: "The dam raised the level of the water behind the reservoir, which led to a rise in the water table of the entire city. Eventually, the rising water affected the foundations of houses." This situation has evolved as a result of the fact that, like many villages and several districts in Egypt, Esna has no modern sewage; most houses have disposed of their sewage in septic tanks that were regularly cleared. In some cases, houses saved their refuse in barrels that were collected by municipal tankers, a somewhat inefficient system. "When the tankers broke down," engineer Mary Thabet explains, "the workers had to empty the barrels themselves, which is rather messy if you know what I mean." To make things worse, some homes empty their sewage directly onto the streets, turning some side streets into muddy cesspools -- suffering from which Abdel-Latif Abu Zeid has already filed several complaints to the municipal council. Some families even go so far as to pipe their sewage straight into the river. With the rise in the water table, houses became more vulnerable to waste. The Arab Contractors Company (ACC) thus commenced building a sewerage system, but the locals dislike the disruption which the work is causing, and doubt its efficiency. As one inhabitant puts it, "We see no results. All we see are blocked-up roads and flooded streets. Many people have broken their legs trying to negotiate those man-made disasters." Once again ,it is the new dam that must take the blame for the city's troubles. Assem Eduard, deputy manager of the local branch of the ACC, explains, "The new Esna dam was implemented before we finished the sewerage network. It led to a rise in the water table and the septic tanks and sewage trenches are now polluting underground water. When this problem emerged, with its known health risks, ministerial decision 86 for 2002 [ordering the building of a sewerage system at the cost of LE450 million] was passed." But the project must take four years to complete, because of the existence of ancient ruins. "The old city of Esna is situated around the Esna Temple," explains Eduard, "which makes it hard to dig deep in the city streets, which are already very narrow. Also, the houses are old and dilapidated and we have to take into account the special nature of the area we're working in: too many ruins are still lying underground." The project does not simply aim to introduce a sewerage system and protect the antiquities, however. It should also introduce environmental opportunities for Esna's residents. The ACC is installing pipes into streets that could be six to seven metres higher than the level of the ancient city. Once the project is complete, the sewerage will be piped from homes into progressively wider pipes, until it reaches a pumping station that propels it into clarification tanks. Once in the tanks, the sewerage will be 80 per cent purified and fit for recycling as irrigation water. An area of 1,800 acres will be eventually irrigated by it. Of those, 350 acres have been set aside for forestation and timbre production. A forest will be created on the western side of Esna; it will not only provide timbre for construction and industry, but will also help protect the city from the sand storms often blowing in from the desert. The solid residue left in the purification tanks will be used to produce organic fertilisers. "Once we finish creating the forest," says Eduard, "our project will have ended and we will turn it over to the owner, which is the municipality and the Sewage Authority. We will also provide them with maps of the sewage network we have built in the city." The rosy prospect notwithstanding, on the ground, the project involves a wide range of challenges, argues engineer Ashraf Ahmed, director of the South Valley Branch of the Esna Project: "We're dealing with many variables at the same time, some of which are not of a strictly engineering nature. We have been given LE90 million to cover our work for four years, at the rate of LE22.5 million per year. The problem is that during the implementation, and as a result of Esna's circumstances and the presence of ruins and dilapidated buildings, the work has taken far longer than expected." Ahmed also feels that the complaints of the residents are unfair : "Infrastructure projects take a long time to complete. Of course, ordinary citizens will be inconvenienced by the work and will feel that we've overstayed our welcome. Sometimes, the inhabitants feel that we're not working hard enough, because we may be working in one part of the city one day, and in another the next. This is why we're going to have a discussion with the project's engineering consultant so that we start operating part of the network early on, instead of waiting until the whole network is finished. This would show the population that there is light at the end of the tunnel." Other problems have come up during work, says Eduard: "We had no exact maps of the utility lines, so we didn't know where they were. When we started digging, I had to prepare coordination reports with the City Council, the telephone company and other government departments in the city, including the Antiquities Authority." Shockingly, no one knew the location of the utility lines or the antiquity sites since, as he explains, those who used to know are either retired or can no longer remember; some are dead or have relocated to another town. "Even after preparing the reports, we would still run into a telephone or electricity line. This is why we had to switch from machines to manual digging, which costs time and money. Add to this the problem of underground water, which we encounter at one metre below the surface. Since we apply the method of sloping pipes, one mile of pipes would take us six metres underground, which means that the work has to stop until we pump off the water." Ahmed says the hardest part of the work will be that conducted close to the Esna Temple, which the company plans to tackle next year. "We're told that the visible part of the temple is only one half of it. The other half is hidden underneath the old city, an inhabited area." But evacuating those inhabitants is certain to turn into another problem that will further delay the completion of the project -- as has been the case with residential areas found on top of antiquities or sites with historical significance. Many residents know there could be Pharaonic antiquities underneath their houses, but try not to bring up the issue in front of others. "We know there could be treasures under our homes, but saying that, or even notifying the authorities , means that either our lands will be confiscated, or no plans to modernise will ever be implemented," says one anonymous source. On the other hand, Abdel-Sattar Ahmed, head of the Esna and Armant antiquities, says that the Supreme Council of Antiquities has drawn up a plan to protect the Esna Temple from the rising water table. The plan involves the removal of all the buildings situated on top. "The part we see from the temple is only one half of its real size," he reiterates. Since much of the inhabitants' income depends on tourism, many are ready to relocate from their current homes, notes Abdel-Sattar. But only a real evacuation plan can prove him right. The work will become more critical, the closer it gets to the temple. "We will get antiquities experts involved and guards from the Antiquities Authorities will be placed around the site," says Ahmed. "The digging will be done by trained personnel working with manual tools. As soon as an object is found, a committee will assess its historical significance and work will be stopped until a new course of the sewerage pipes is selected." The municipal council says that it is removing all obstacles in the way of the project, but some problems persist. Ahmed says that the rest of the 1,800 acres to be irrigated by the treated water, have yet to be set aside. The council is taking its time to repair streets damaged in the course of the digging. It plans on finishing the renovation work -- the paving, lighting and planting of trees -- all in one go. This means that the inhabitants will have to deal with the current disruption, while hanging onto the hope that the project will, against all odds, be finished on time.
