By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Dec 30 2001 (IPS)

Egyptian environment officials said this week they were successful in reducing the pollution factors that contribute to a cloud of choking black smog that blankets northern Egypt every autumn.

The so-called Black Cloud has appeared over Cairo every autumn since 1999 and its suspected sources are as varied as its health and environmental concerns.

Farmers burning rice straw, illegal garbage burning, vehicle emissions and local meteorological conditions have all been fingered by environmental investigators, who suggest the recurring phenomenon may be a combination of all four.

A state environmental official said the government had seen the first signs of progress in its multi-faceted strategy to remedy the factors contributing to the recurring smog cloud.

“We targeted each source and succeeded to minimise the effect of the Black Cloud this year,” Ahmed Abu Seoud, Project Manager of the state Environmental Information Monitoring Programme (EIMP) said. “Pollution levels were much lower than in previous years.”

Seasonal extremes aside, Cairo’s air quality remains a constant health concern with air pollution levels reported at 10 to 100 times above safe limits defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“Levels of suspended particulate matter and lead pollution in Cairo are perhaps the highest in the world,” the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in May 2000. The agency estimates that air pollution in Cairo causes between 10,000 to 25,000 deaths per year.

When the temperature falls in the autumn and the desert winds stop blowing, the meteorological condition known as thermal inversion traps this air pollution at ground level, where it stings the eyes and causes respiratory problems.

In previous years, the intense smog episode lasted up to six weeks. This year, Cairo residents noticed changes in its duration and intensity.

“October was bad. There were two weeks when we could hardly breathe,” Mohammed Hassan, 24, an accountant in Nasr City said. “There was much less smoke in November (than in previous years), but the haze was still there.”

Officials say rice cultivation, which has grown immensely since the government liberalised crop production in the late 1990s, is a major contributor to this environmental problem.

Farmers see rice as a lucrative crop and farmers in the Delta region produced over 4.5 million tonnes of rice in 2001, Sayyed Tantawi, head of the Rice Producers Society said.

After the rice is harvested in the fall, farmers burn the crop’s wastes to make room for the next harvest of wheat, clover of fava beans. This past autumn, rice straw from an estimated 1.4 million acres of land was ignited almost simultaneously. “This burning coincided with an episode of thermal inversion,” Mohammed Naguib Abu-Sa’ada, a consultant for the state-run Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) pointed out.

Since 1999, government officials have met with Delta rice farmers and ordered them to end the practice of burning rice straw, threatening them with fines worth 230 U.S. dollars. When the fines failed to deter the farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture this summer provided them with 400 compacting and bundling machines to recycle their agricultural wastes.

Farmers used the machines to turn their agricultural wastes into animal feed and fertiliser. Some, however, were reluctant to give up the age-old practice of burning rice straw. The government stressed that progress was made, but it would take time to change old habits.

“The farmers have been burning rice for 1,000 years and to change this in one or two or even five years is difficult,” Abu-Sa’ada said. “They have no time to recycle. Burning is the easiest solution to the problem.”

While the government has reported some headway in its efforts to stop the burning of agricultural wastes, it has been far less successful in controlling garbage disposal. Cairo alone produces 9,000 tonnes of garbage per day, up to 60 per cent of which is burned illegally, Amin Khayal, Director of Solid Waste Management at the EEAA said.

“In Egypt there are currently no suitable places for correct (waste) disposal. Three years ago the administration identified locations for sanitary landfills in all Egyptian governorates, but until now it has not been implemented,” he said.

Instead, the government has tried in vain to funnel the garbage to five designated open dumpsites in Greater Cairo. Most people cannot afford garbage services, so they dump illegally or burn their rubbish.

Environment Law 38/1994 makes it illegal to burn solid waste without a license and all burning must be done away from residential, industrial or agricultural areas. The law imposes a fine of 230 to 4600 dollars on first offenders, with a jail sentence for repeat offenders. But enforcing the law is another matter.

Khayal admitted he did not know when, if ever, these penalties were enforced.

“You must ask the governorates,” he said, adding that the EEAA only formulates environmental laws. Other bodies are expected to apply them.

When weather conditions are right, the smoke created by burning agricultural waste and garbage, as well as car and factory emissions, comes together to create a thick black cloud that settles on the city, obscuring visibility and aggravating health problems.

Lower pollution levels this year support the government’s claim that its environmental campaign is making progress, but unless authorities can make waste treatment and recycling profitable, Cairo’s recurring smog cloud problem seems unlikely to go away.

A zebaal (garbage collector) remarked: “It’s cheaper to burn waste than to treat it.”

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