Shafaq News – BasraWater pollution in Basra has reached unprecedented levels, Iraq’s Green Observatory for the Environment warned on Wednesday, describing the current contamination as the worst in decades.
According to the observatory, untreated water—laden with impurities, worms, and algae—is reaching residents’ homes.
Mehdi al-Tamimi, head of the Human Rights Commission office in Basra, said the situation reflects a recurring environmental tragedy that began worsening in 2010 and peaked in 2018. He noted that high salinity levels in Shatt al-Arab typically appear in May or June each year, but this year the crisis began as early as January.
“There is a clear failure in delivering treated water to homes,” al-Tamimi said, explaining that raw, unfiltered water is being pumped directly into residential networks. He added that toxicity levels in the water are so high that it is unsuitable even for plant or animal use.
Al-Tamimi criticized the failure of major desalination projects, despite large sums allocated for water treatment infrastructure. He contrasted Basra’s situation with Kuwait, which built a large-scale seawater desalination plant within nine months after 1991.
In 2018, Basra witnessed a public health emergency with over 150,000 reported cases of poisoning linked to water contamination. Al-Tamimi expected this figure to rise significantly in 2025, warning that the province remains among Iraq’s most water-scarce and climate-vulnerable regions.
He urged authorities to contract a reputable, technically capable company for the stalled desalination project and to commit to clear deadlines for completion to safeguard public health.
Meanwhile, human rights and civil society figures in Basra filed formal complaints with the public prosecutor’s office, accusing the local government of legal violations in handling the water file.
Ali al-Abbadi, head of the Iraq Center for Human Rights, along with Busrayatha Cultural Federation President Ammar Sarhan Rashk and lawyer Jaafar Ismail, submitted legal notices accusing the Basra administration of negligence, wasting public funds, and endangering the lives of over five million residents by failing to resolve the crisis.
The filings demand accountability for what activists describe as a systematic failure in water management that amounts to "deliberate harm" to public health and the environment.