Recycling Waste in Egypt

Thousands of fish were dropping dead of organ failure and hunger in Egypt's highly polluted Suez Canal as their food sources withered away in the wake of fast-dipping oxygen levels in the canal. The local residents' fish consumption dropped dramatically.

Discharging untreated industrial effluents and sewage water back into rivers, lakes, and the sea causes heavy environmental damage. Effluents disturb water parameters, depleting oxygen depletion and increasing acidity or alkalinity, turbidity, and saltiness. The marine life absorbs the toxins, which enter our bodies when we consume toxin-rich fish.

A very worried Egyptian government decided to get a grip on things. Health and safety concerns have traditionally been the main reasons for resisting wastewater reuse for fish farming, but Egyptian scientists believed that adverse health effects could be avoided if the waste was sufficiently treated before reuse. They get the credit for pioneering a new technology in 1985 that reuses wastewater by recycling it with the help of stabilization and sedimentation ponds. Since then, this method has been successfully adopted by various countries, including Brazil, India, China and Pakistan.

In 1988, the Suez Canal Managing Authority piped about 400 tons of sewage from the city of Suez to a treatment plant that was built for this demonstration study. The water was treated in two ways: first, by a "waste stabilization ponds system" followed by an "aerobic treatment" process. This simple system is less expensive than conventional forms of water treatment, and is easily replicable.

A series of three ponds treated the sewage for 21 days. Different sets of pollutants and pathogens were eliminated in each of the three ponds by using bacteria bred specifically to target and remove these health hazards.

This water was then siphoned into a second set of four ponds. This "aerobic treatment" stage of the purification – in which oxygen was introduced into one pond after another – allowed the "good" organisms to flourish, decomposing a broad range of pollutants. This took a total of 26 days.

The water in the newly-created fishpond conformed to World Health Organization standards for oxygen, nutrients, and ammonia levels.

An examination of the bacteria in the local fish grown in the fishpond revealed a quality that is on par with, or even better than, freshwater fish anywhere in the world. Further, farmers could use the nutrient-rich water from the fishpond to grow trees and crops like barley, maize, and beetroot.

Scientists were confident of the safety of consuming fish grown in wastewater, but the farmers and consumers had to be won over. The sight of mutilated fish dying in droves not so long ago was not an easy one to erase from public memory.

Resistance was overcome by bringing together local water managers – Suez Canal authorities and public-spirited citizens, including members of citizen groups – to work on a media blitzkrieg that generated awareness about the fact that the water had gone through a purification process that met with international standards. The goal was to change peoples' mindset from "toxic fish" to "safe fish."

The campaign used made good use of the media, and the local government joined forces to help explain the quality of pre-and post-purification water. They explained how the purified water was segregated in ponds, and that young fish grown in unpolluted water had been introduced.

Local residents who were straining at the leash to get their fishing economy back in shape eventually supported this venture. It didn't hurt that the purification plant pumped out treated water to fish farmers' ponds, and soon, this portion of the community was won over.

Email: muticon@wananchi.com; sasol@kenyaweb.com