The Director of Conservation for the group, Anna Bachmann, reported in April that, “the entire sewage load of the city is dumped into the river and then it is used to irrigate agricultural fields and water livestock around Sulaymaniyah, Arbat, Said Sadiq and New Halabja, with each town and village adding their own contribution to the sewage and toxic load that the river carries.” Additionally, Nature Iraq reported, the river banks, along with many open spaces throughout the area, are also used a dumping grounds for construction wastes, as well as industrial and municipal garbage.
According to Rizkar Jijis, a doctor and official from Sulaymaniyah’s directorate of health, agricultural products that have been irrigated with water from the Tanjero may well be contaminated. “If not well washed, the vegetables may cause severe illness such as diarrhoea, fever and other illnesses,” the health advisor said.
“If a vegetable has leaves or crevices, bacteria can find their way into them. Lettuce, celery and other similar vegetables are good examples,” Rizkar Jijis, a doctor, said. “If polluted water has been used to irrigate these vegetables, then they should be well washed for half an hour.” Jijis said it would also be best to use salt or compounds like potassium permanganate to wash vegetables, to ensure they were not contaminated.
“It is for this reason, that the Sulaymaniyah health directorate bans restaurants from serving vegetables from the Tanjero area,” Jijis explained. “Because restaurants use large quantities of these vegetables and they cannot wash all them all properly.”
“Of course, we cannot stop people from growing vegetables because this is their main source of income,” Jijis concluded, noting that the only way to ensure vegetables were safe was to irrigate with water from wells rather than the rivers.
All of this has led to the increased import of vegetables into Sulaymaniyah, a city which once had all its vegetable needs filled by the farms in the Tanjero River region.
Vegetable seller Barham Bakr believed that local produce was becoming less available. He felt that during the last five years production has fallen by almost two thirds. “Now we buy our vegetables from other sources,” Bakr said, pointing out that cities south of Sulaymaniyah were now the main source of his stock.
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