A potable water contamination scare caused panic in several cities last week. Injy El-Kashef investigates The port cities of Damietta, Daqahliya, Ismailia and Port Said have been rife with anxious rumours about a contaminated water supply. In Ismailia and Port Said residents were afraid that an oil spill in the Mediterranean Sea had reached the Ismailia Canal -- the latter city's main source of potable water -- and polluted the water. In Daqahliya and Damietta, the speculation centered on claims that a truck carrying chemicals had fallen into the branch of the Nile that supplies those cities with water. Two tankers, the Marshall Islands-registered Genmar Kestrel and the Singapore-flagged Trijata, collided on 5 February, about 14 nautical miles from the port of Damietta, on the northern Egyptian coast. The collision, caused by strong winds, resulted in a total of 1,500 tonnes of crude oil being spilled from the two ships. The Suez Canal Authority took immediate measures to prevent the slick from reaching the canal, its second such effort since December 2004, when a leak from a damaged Kuwaiti oil tanker in the strategic waterway was contained as well. Although the Environment Ministry confirmed that authorities had cleaned what remained of the 1,500-tonne oil slick, and that Suez Canal traffic was unaffected by the incident, other fears soon appeared. In Ismailia, residents began complaining of severe gastroenteritis. Rabab Mohamed, mother of an 11-months-old infant, said that after washing her son's bottle with tap water, all of a sudden he "had a sudden attack of vomiting and diarrhoea, and became so weak that he could not even stand". Mohamed said her doctor recommended avoiding even local bread, since "water is one of its ingredients, and it does not stay long enough in the oven for the germs to die with the heat". Mona Arafa, who was treated for the same symptoms, said her doctor attributed her illness to "a virus in the water". Ismailia pediatrician Maha Shaaban said she treated "an unusually large number of cases of gastroenteritis over the past couple of weeks". Authorities were tight-lipped about the situation. Magda Rakha, head of the Health Ministry's primary, preventive and endemic health care unit, remained continuously unavailable for comment. The World Health Organisation's (WHO) Regional Coordinator for Healthy Environment Hussein Abu Zeid said his organisation was "given no information". In Daqahliya, meanwhile, widespread panic ensued after a resident used a mosque's loudspeaker to warn against the contamination of local potable water. The unidentified man claimed that a truck carrying germicides had fallen into the Nile, polluting the water, and causing severe cases of poisoning that ended in several fatalities. According to eyewitnesses in Daqahliya, a number of cases of vomiting and diarrhoea were reported, along with local accounts of a notable change in the colour of the drinking water. The security apparatus responded in tune, using mosque loudspeakers to reassure citizens of the cleanliness of the water. Daqahliya Governor Ahmed Said also strongly refuted the contamination claims, stressing that potable water was 100 per cent safe. Irrigation and Water Resources Minister Mahmoud Abu Zeid said all 16 of Daqahliya's laboratories had tested the water, resulting in a blanket verdict that the potable water conformed to "agreed [safety] standards". In Damietta, where residents were also categorically refusing to drink tap water, Damietta Governor Mohamed Fathi El- Baradei appeared on local TV to confirm the safety of the water and deny the presence of any cases of poisoning. Environment Ministry First Undersecretary Ibrahim Ayyad El-Maraghi told Al-Ahram Weekly there was "no danger" in the allegedly affected cities' potable water supply. He refused, however, to comment further. A highly placed official source with extensive nautical expertise, who spoke to the Weekly on condition of anonymity, said it was impossible for an oil spill to "reach the Ismailia Canal, simply because salty sea water will always remain at a lower level than the canal's fresh water, which means that an oil slick could pour from the canal into the sea, but not vice versa". As for the germicide truck theory, he explained that "the capacity of a large truck is 33 tonnes; considering the chemical weight of oil, it would float over the surface of the water in a film approximately three millimetres thick, which means that it would spread over a range of four kilometres, suffocating all the fish in the water." Moreover, he added, "there has been talk of pollution in Damietta and Daqahliya, which are 250kms apart, each on a different branch of the Nile. It is impossible that one truckload could cover this huge distance, not affect any other life form, and upon reaching the two cities, cause water poisoning to some and not others, when it is the same drinking water. None of it makes any scientific sense." These reassurances notwithstanding, the demand for bottled water in these towns skyrocketed literally overnight, raising the price of a carton from LE15 to LE25 in Daqahliya, for instance. There has also been increased demand in Ismailia. According to Maged Mustafa, who handles deliveries for the Ismailia branch of Metro supermarket, "the same clients who ordered just a few bottles per delivery, now order at least two cartons." If anything, the water scare seems to have expanded. The Ismailia Metro's manager, Maher Ashour, said demand at the supermarket's Mansoura branch (100kms away) was so high that the Ismailia branch "sent them additional supplies of bottled water, since there seems to be a problem with the tap water [over there]" as well.
