SubscribeThousands of families in Iraq now have access to clean water.
Thousands of families now have access to clean wateras the Iraq Water Project (IWP) so far sent three teams of veterans to Iraq who paid for their own expenses and worked alongside the Iraqi laborers repairing water treatment plants. We are proud to announce that thanks to the IWP six water treatment plants in different cities and provinces of Iraq are now again serving clean drinking water to more than 85.000 people. Read a report by our IWP Project Coordinator sent from Iraq in August 2003.
Project History
In response to the continuing crisis in Iraq due to the first Gulf War and economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations, Veterans for Peace members in the United States created the Iraq Water Project in 1999.
Fredy Champagne and Edilith Eckart were the founders and first co-chairs of the project and members of the first team to travel to Iraq to begin the work of rebuilding water treatment plants in the country devastated first by war and then by economic sanctions and continued bombing by the United States of America. Edilith later traveled to Basrah to insure that the water was indeed safe to drink. Over several years, six water treatment plants were rebuilt in rural Iraq.
The primary goal of the Iraq Water Project was to save lives.
The second goal of the original IWP was to educate the American people about the devastating effects a decade of sanctions had on the average citizens of Iraq and to force an end to these sanctions against Iraq.
The sanctions have been lifted, not as we hoped, through education and pressure on the US government, but as a byproduct of US President Geoprge W. Bush's unprovoked attack on that nation. The sanctions have been lifted because the War on Iraq completed the destruction of the infrastructure, a foreseeable consequence that was completely ignored in the prewar planning. The US made sure the oil was flowing, but did nothing to prepare for the chaos that comes after the fall of a government. Now, it is not only the vast rural areas that are without safe drinking water, but the big cities as well. The US government has been unable to even get the lights on, feed the hungry or provide basic health care.
Before this latest war, and in calamitous consequence of earlier US policy, Iraq was a social and environmental disaster in the making. Now it is a social and environmental disaster, made and delivered.
IWP Future
Veterans For Peace has begun a new phase of the Iraq Water Project.
First, we will work with LIFE for Relief and Development to reclaim the first six water treatment plants, and make good the damages done to these plants by our own country's belligerent actions.
But more importantly, Veterans for Peace will be watching the US government and the reconstruction corporations chosen in a no-bid system for their donations to the Bush-Cheney campaign fund. We will work aggressively to insure that basic human services such as clean water, sewer and electricity needed by the Iraqi people are not sold out to benefit a few wealthy Americans at the expense of this proud and ancient culture.
The Water Plants
Veterans for Peace managed to raise close to $200,000 to repair six water treatment facilities which serve a population of more than 85,000 people. Plus, in a public display exhibiting support for the civilian population of Iraq, three teams of US service veterans traveled to Iraq on their own expenses and worked alongside the Iraqi laborers who are fixing the water facilities.
An exampleof the water plants helped is the Hamden Jissir plant.
The Cost of Repair & Maintenance:
- Repair $12,500
- New generator $5,000