TASHKENT, Dec 29 (Asia Water Wire) - “I dread heavy rain! When it comes, water from cesspits floods our yard because the cesspits cannot absorb all the liquid then,” says Farogat, a 65 year-old resident of the Uzbeki capital.

   Farogat lives in the Khamzinskii district’s Okhunboboev makhallya, a local governing body, with her son, his wife and their son in a small house with a diminutive yard containing two cesspits that collect waste from the kitchen and from the toilet. The pits, four to five metres in depth, are lined with worn lorry tyres so that they do not collapse.

   “When the rain pours, the cesspits get filled up and their contents flow into the yard, and this carries an objectionable odour,” continues Farogat.

   Her son Gayubnazar complains, “Once we called a vacuum tanker and paid 15,000 sums (12 U.S. dollars) to discharge waste from one of the pits, but the men discharged it only partially. Fortunately, the cesspits can absorb wastes.”

   The woes that these residents lament stand out given the fact that Tashkent, a city of two million people, is known for its tree-lined wide streets, square kilometres of apartment blocks, numerous fountains and pleasing parks. After a powerful earthquake in April 1966, it was rebuilt into a ‘model’ city in the Soviet Union, which Uzbekistan used to be part of.

   The first sewerage system, all of seven kilometres long, began to function in the city in 1937. Over 70 years, the length of the sewerage network grew to up to 2,500 kilometres. By 2000, it covered about 80 percent of the city, according to a report prepared by Uzbekistan’s State Committee for Nature Protection, UzGlavGidroMet, the central administrative board of hydrometeorological service of Uzbekistan, National University of Uzbekistan and some non-governmental organisations.

   Pointing to a cesspit that was some 75 centimetres in diameter and two metres in depth, Rakhman-aka, a 68 year-old pensioner, told Asia Water Wire: “I have covered it with sheet iron so kids cannot fall into there. Of course, I have not had it covered with concrete because we do not have enough money.”

   He heads a household of 10 family members, which include his wife, two children and six grandchildren. Rakhman-aka’s wife claims that the cesspit does not smell because nobody throws foreign matter there.

   Cesspits without septic tanks, the effluent from which may contain pathogens and chemical substances, affect groundwater and drinking water supplies. Pathogenic organisms cause cholera, typhoid and paratyphoid fevers, dysentery and diarrhoea. Hookworm, schistosomiasis and filariasis are found in faeces, urine and sewage.

   People from the Okhunboboev makhallya drink tap water, but water flows in pipes intermittently and the pressure is at times very low.

   This presents a danger because poor joints, cracks and holes in the pipe walls allow effluent to leak into the pipes when they are empty or under reduced pressure.

   “If a person suffering from a disease lives in such a house, bacteria or viruses accumulate in the ground in which people plant vegetables,” an environment advocate explained in an interview. “Through food, pathogens affect people.”

   “The increased polluting and toxic substances in the water, as well as… (a large) quantity of micro-organisms leads to different poisoning, infectious and gastro-intestinal illnesses,” says a report by Uzbekistan’s State Committee for Nature Protection.

   “We unambiguously need sewerage,” says the owner of a luxurious two-storey house that is equipped with showers, baths and toilets. Urine and faeces, however, gather in a large cesspit in the middle of the yard.

   The owner pays 1,000 U.S. dollars a year to discharge waste from the house. This is a huge amount, given that per capita gross domestic product was 1,900 U.S. dollars in Uzbekistan in 2005.

   The cesspit in his yard is not lined with concrete. But the soil pores have been blocked, which makes him invite a vacuum tanker every two months.

   Two sewage treatment plants with a total capacity of around 2 million cubic metres per day clean used water and waste substances produced in the capital. But much of their equipment need to be replaced by new ones and the construction of a new sewage plant with a capacity of around 500,000 cubic metres per day seems necessary, says the report by the State Committee for Nature Protection.
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   “The volume of sewage carried away from Tashkent exceeds the total capacity of the two sewage plants and part of it is being dumped into a river without treatment,” a sanitary inspector, who prefers not to be named, told AWW. “People outside Tashkent bathe in such water, use it in households and sometimes drink it, which results in outbreaks of infections.”

   Outbreaks of typhoid and dysentery related to excreta and polluted wastewater have been reported in some districts of the Tashkent region in recent years, he noted. (END/AWW/IPSAP/MK/JS/291206)