bottled water (bassem)

Good thing it only costs 500LL

Good thing it only costs 500LL – you can get a better price if you buy the dozen, because it’s cheaper by the dozen – the 1.5 L costs 750 LL (1.25 x the price, 3 x more water) – the 5 L gallon costs 1500 (3 x the price, 10 x more water) – the 19 L reusable gallon costs 5000LL, we get it for 4500LL, I don’t know how we got that deal though. (9 x the price, 38 x more water) –the last deal is better than the others, 263.14LL/Liter – you can go to the ‘ein (العين), fill up whatever container you have with the fresh cold water, no charge – you could set up your filtering system, get potable water straight out of the tap – you could also | WAIT – WAIT – WAIT | potable water out of the tap?! Why so surprised... Isn’t this how it’s supposed to be? Maybe in a million years –

He is a farmer, he lives in Akkar. Arab, jarab, darab, naatab, khachab, ghadab and yves are his sons who had survived, after the 5 others died. [they were a dozen]. With their father, they grow vegetables, the ones that would grow without water, tomatoes. They actually rely on rain water to get the crops, if it’s a dry season, they harvest the tomatoes after the first rain, no irrigation, they call the tomatoes baal (بعل (, now that they know how to grow crops with very little water, they still need to find out another way for having drinking water. No one mentioned potable water; they just need drinking water. Drinking water for them could come from the rain water they collect, a lake nearby, and sometimes, from the leaking faucet they have attached to the rusty pipe coming from we don’t know where. No ‘ein nearby, no luck for them. No good rain water collecting system neither, no luck for them. Lake dries sooner than they realize no luck for them. Faucet water is why abou arab now only has seven sons. Apparently, Mud, dirt, mire, muck, earth, ooze, sludge, giardia, E. coli, and protozoa did not prevent them from quenching their thirst.

Wastewater Treatment- Dana m

One day, Karim was wandering around the AUB campus while considering the idea of becoming a visiting student for the spring semester. That way he could spend some time with his relatives in Beirut. Wanting to take a look at the campus he started his journey to take in the sites that AUB has to offer. While he was walking around one of the departments, he almost tripped over a large bucket filled with some sort of bubbly water and white foam on the surface. Looking around for the reason of the ill placed bucket, he noticed one of the janitors mopping the floor inside one of the rooms. After a while, as Karim was going to the toilets, he noticed a little room on the side before the entrance of the restroom, where the janitor was disposing of what was now dirty “gray” cleaning water in a weird looking sink. It was the first time he had seen such a fixture. To his knowledge, the cleaning water is usually disposed in the WC. He couldn’t help but ask the janitor about that weird looking sink, to which the janitor smiled and answered Karim that it was called a mop sink. It is a fixture equipped especially for public buildings for cleaning water to be disposed of and he then pointed out at three metal rods coming out of the mop sink like ribs and said that those are used to hang the mops after they are cleaned. Happy by the discovery he had just made he then went down to Aain El Mreisseh, waiting for his cousin to be done with his classes. He had an hour to waste, and since he hadn’t been to Lebanon in four years, he decided to go to the Corniche and enjoy the sea side on this sunny winter day. As he was enjoying his promenade, he observed all the different user groups of the Corniche around him, the fishermen, the joggers, the couples flirting on a beautiful day and the few people swimming next to the fishermen. He then leaned on the rail and wanted to enjoy the horizon even more. To his misfortune, he decided to settle directly over a large pipe located right across from McDonald’s. To his surprise, when he leaned over, he saw all sorts of untreated wastewater coming out of the pipe to the sea. The pipe was discharging the wastewater without any treatment directly into the sea. He then looked again at the fishermen, the couples, the joggers and the ones swimming and was alarmed by what he saw. Compared to where he comes from, wastewater goes through all sorts of treatments to the point where it gets rehabilitated for irrigation, fertilizing the land etc... These people here are just hanging around this filth and they’re not even aware of it. He then thought back again about the mop sink and said to himself: why have these intricate fixtures if the water is not going to be filtered and end up directly into the sea anyway?!

Water Trajectory (Sources)

I was walking on the sea shore, people ahead of me; some are fishing, some are sitting, and some are jogging. On my right, the sea; the large boats scaling down gradually till my eyes met the horizon: An endless line that aroused my thoughts, this unrealistic line, is it a boundary of Lebanon? Of the sea? Of the earth? Of the sky? Or does it limit the Lebanese’s international water? Accordingly, and since our water and the international one are merged: how much does Lebanon profit from its water? What is the international water’s relationship to the sea water in Lebanon especially that it has a coast of about 225km? My sight shifting while walking, I could see the Jounieh bay now, and next to it the eastern mountains of Lebanon. I started wondering about that special Lebanese landscape where the mountains meet the shore, where my sight of vision goes up to define the undulated outline created by the peaks of those mountains. This is where rain water is filtered, purified and filled up in bottles just like this one I am holding and that I bought minutes ago.
I was walking by the Quaraoun Lake, in the Bekaa Valley, looking at the quiet scenery around me. Some boats for touring are waiting there, other water activities are available too, and few people were there only taking snapshots of the picturesque view. I was standing next to some rocks; a sort of a dry shore. I could see a blue line marked by the pebbles on the ground. This is where last winter the water level got to and in some coming months will hopefully reach it again. Looking at the lake, my eye filters the image to keep my sight into the one dominating element, Water. It is what you can only see at first. Then I start to realize the various tones of that water. The hitting sun is reflecting a shadow of the eastern Mountains in front of me into the lake. The water has a dark opaque color; I couldn’t see what is underneath it at the shore. It is filled with waste, polluted, with no life in it. Beyond the trivial boats at a halt, the flow of my sight following the water river is blocked by a rough concrete horizontal block called dam linking both the eastern and western Lebanese mountains. My eye now can see the delineation of the enclosing towns around the artificial lake: They profit from this water collection and the electricity produced from it. Isn’t this cove created by the natural leveling of the land? Aren’t they too provided by other natural water sources coming from the hills?
In fact, the sources of water originate from various places, yet meet in the same location. The topography of Lebanon allows for certain connections to take place, not just visually but also physically. The horizon appears not only as a boundary but also as the joinery of two different sources of water. The eastern mountains of Lebanon, with their water flowing, meet with the western mountains water in the horizon, in the sea, in the prevalent source of water that constitutes the lowest level in Lebanon.

By Nadine Al Harakeh and Massa Ammouri

Domestic Water Syastem - Roula Gholmieh, Maissa Naim

I wake up, go to bathroom and open the water faucet. I wash my face, brush my teeth. I use the wc and flush. I open the water faucet again,
wash my hands. I go to the kitchen, fill a glass of water from the water distributer, drink half of it, and put it back on the table. I go take a
shower. In the afternoon, I fill up the watering‐can and go out to water the plants. Later, I call my friends and invite them over for dinner. I go
to the kitchen take a cloth with some water and detergent and start cleaning up the counters. I go to the freezer and fill the ice cube trays. I get
some vegetables and wash them using the filtered tap water. Meanwhile, I start boiling some water for the pasta. 2 hours later, dinner was
ready and my friends were here. I accidentally spilled some wine on my pants. So I went up the stairs to the bathroom, clogged the sink put in
my pants, added some detergent and opened the faucet. I went back down, to check on the grill and serve the main course. We sat down and
started eating. Minutes later, water started dripping slowly from the ceiling, my brother started yelling. I realized I had left the water faucet
open upstairs. Oops.
But where did this water come from? Is it different according to the different uses?
It’s raining. The water goes down the rivers along Beirut. It is collected by the municipality, but most of this water isn’t used for domestic use, it
is wasted in the sea. Another water source comes from the ground, from the water tables. Today due to the insufficiency of the river water, the
municipality mixes both river and ground water. Before sending it to our houses, it is treated with chlorine in order to kill the living organisms,
and prevent their reproduction. This water is then piped to our houses. When the water gets to the reservoirs of our buildings, it is filtered from
the excess of sodium and magnesium by a softener device. Then it is distributed to the different water supplies of the house. Domestic water
use is separated into two user categories: kitchen use and bathroom use. Water used for the kitchen must be cleaner and therefore needs
more developed filters. Depending on how bad the quality of water is one gets to choose between a UV sterilizer that kills the microorganisms,
and the reverse osmosis device which can be plugged underneath the sink which is a recent technology consisting of a very fine filter therefore
giving very clean water. The water arriving from the municipality is supposed to be potable water but due to the big amount of chlorine used to
kill microorganisms an external filter is usually added on an individual water pipe to use it for potable water. On the other hand, bathroom
water used for body wash doesn’t need to be that clean, therefore it can use just the normal solid filter of the water pipe or if water isn’t of
good quality a softener device.
In Beirut, people usually get their water from the municipality but other chose to use individually ground water. Therefore the water in Beirut is
of bad quality and usually needs high quality filtering as the reverse osmosis technique, and therefore apply it for the entire water use.

Bottled Water Vs. Tap Water. Sara Abu Saleh & Ola Hariri

Hafiza wakes up in her bed, turning from side to side, irritated by the heat of a hot summery August morning in Beirut. The Air Conditioning in her bedroom is out of order. A drop of sweat is running down her forehead. Her throat is dry from the heat. Her body is dehydrated due to the alcohol she consumed in the neighbor’s house party last night.

Aching for a drop of water she sits up straight, looks around for a bottle of water. Unable to find one, she gets out of bed, drowsy, thirsty, and walks towards the bathroom to wash her face. She opens the water in the sink to wash her face. Seeing the water run down the sink, Hafiza feels as if she found an oasis in the desert. She was so tempted to stick her head under the sink and drink the water but all the while she was held back from doing so by the fear of getting sick from the tap water. So she sticks to washing her face and brushing her teeth. After having done so, her thirst grew stronger; and when she found herself out of bottled water, Hafiza rushed out of the house and started walking down the stairs towards the entrance of the building. The dryness of her throat was unbearable, it made her weak and drowsy, it made every step seem slower and endless..
She finally opened the gate to the street, rushed outside expecting to breath some fresh air, instead she felt the humidity in her nostrils and the heat on her skin. Her throat was getting torn from the dryness. She reach the mini market next to her house, ran towards the fridge and got herself a bottle of water as f it was the key to heaven’s door. Paid for it and drank it like it was the last drop of water she will ever taste.

Fishermen VS Towers

This photo was taken last summer 2009. I was completing my internship at an architecture office based in Ain el Mraysseh - Beirut. The office had a main view that gave on the sea. One day something weird was happening; it was impossible not to notice how the sea color was changing. It turned from blue to a greenish white, an unusual color that stirred feelings of disgust. This weird color faded away and the sea turned back to blue in an interval of 1 hour or so. But the color of dirt came back again just a few later, so I took a photo of it with my mobile because at that time I was working with friends of mine in an environmentalist party on an exhibition to raise awareness about ecological problems, so I was documenting every case I found to be alarming. Another hour and the color was gone again… The sea shore kept changing in color all day long it made us in the office wonder about it, we were a bit busy to go out and check what was happening. But we guessed it right. When I left the office that day, heading to my car, I noticed the construction site just next to the building where I work. Waste material was disposed off right on the shore!! And then waves would carry the entire waste deep in the sea… and the worst is that no one cared to stop this crime because the next day same thing happened again. The most striking is that I used to see people fishing around the same spot where waste was disposed off, and it’s at a proximity to where AUB beach is located!! Whoever was responsible of that construction site either had no clue about the harming effects of their acts on recreational spaces and aquatic life, or simply were they careless and selfish!

Mohammad A. Ramadan- Drinking Water Flows

I leave AUB and walk back home. On my way I feel thirsty, so I buy a bottle of water for 500 LL. When I arrive home, I open the drinking water tap and water flows from the tap. I feel lucky, as the municipality only provides drinking water two or three days per week. However, when I drink the tap water, I taste chlorine in it. As tap water is not pleasant to drink, and as I am not willing to pay a lot of money to buy “Nestle Pure Life”, I visit a water shop, and get a 20 litre plastic container filled with drinking water for 3000 LL. This is a typical story. The irony is that during the same day I drink expensive water, cheap water, and free water. The fact that the municipality provides free water only three days per week makes me obliged to rely on cheap water from water shops. Even when free water is available I might consider cheap water as free water has a “chlorine” taste. As for expensive bottled water, I am obliged to buy it when there is no other source of drinking water. This happens when I am in a public space. Now besides the cost, there’s a question of quality. In Lebanon, local brands of bottled water are supposedly of high quality, as they are bottled directly from the source, which is a natural spring that is not exposed at all to any contamination. As for the municipal water, it is controversial whether it is healthy to drink or not, but it’s for sure that it has an unpleasant taste that makes me reluctant to drink it. As for the cheap water, nobody can evaluate its quality! Its more or less pleasant taste and its very low price make it the most popular, but nobody is quite sure whether or not it is treated properly to become potable, especially that it comes from a groundwater well and it for sure needs treatment, as groundwater in Beirut is contaminated with nitrates.