Karbala denies radioactive contamination

KARBALA / IraqiNews.com: Reports that are alleging that the dust used to cover the city’s rivers is radioactively contaminated are “incorrect,” Karbala‘s governor said today.   The “investigations proved that there is no environmental contamination,” Governor Amal Al-Deen al-Hir added to IraqiNews.com.  “The dust used to cover the bottoms of the rivers was transported from a former military industrial site, but the investigations proved they bear no indications of contamination,” he added.  The Iraqi Environment Society in Karbala said in a report that “there are contaminations that endanger the lives of the citizens in one of the projects where the dust used is taken from a formermilitary industrial site.”  “The Environment Department did not take the necessary measures in cleaning the site, despite the fact that these materials are dangerous and can poison food production,” the report added.  Hir noted that 20 samples were sent to the Ministry of Water Resources’ laboratories and the results were “clean.”  Karbala is working on covering the bottoms and banks of many rivers in the province to  be covered later with cement within a pioneering project to minimize water waste and shortage with the lowering levels of the Euphrates River.  RM (TS)/SR 428