ENHANCE UNDERSTANDING

New Report Identifies Glaring Gap in Iraq’s Wastewater Management

The sewage-filled Shiw-a Sur Chay flows into the Great Zab River at Gwer, southwest of Erbil.

Iraq faces a profound and growing shortage of clean water. Climate change, upstream damming, and rising demand are drastically reducing the volume of freshwater in the Tigris and Euphrates river systems—the nation’s hydrological lifelines. This physical scarcity is exacerbated by a largely unseen crisis: the large-scale contamination of these dwindling resources with untreated wastewater. Iraq’s extensive deficits in wastewater collection and treatment infrastructure, overwhelmed by population growth and decades of neglect, transform wastewater management from a mere environmental concern into a direct threat to water security.

EPIC’s new report: “Securing Iraq’s Water Future Through Wastewater Management Reform” analyses the state of Iraq’s wastewater management infrastructure and the enduring challenges that result in millions of cubic meters of sewage being discharged directly into Iraq’s rivers each day.

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النسخة العربية

This practice pollutes scarce water resources, rendering them unsafe for human and animal consumption. Furthermore, in the downstream south, offtake and intense evaporation concentrates these wastewater pollutants, and the resulting contaminated flows merge with—and exacerbate—the severe, separate crisis of seawater intrusion, rendering vast quantities of freshwater unusable. By simultaneously degrading quality and diminishing usable supply for drinking, agriculture, and industry, this contamination compounds the severe challenges facing one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations.

The report highlights a critical failure in infrastructure and governance: the near-total lack of treatment capacity in the upstream provinces of the Kurdistan region.

From Sulaymaniyah to Basra, harmful pathogens like E. coli and cholera vibrio, combined with household chemicals and toxic industrial byproducts—including oils, heavy metals, and hazardous compounds—pose a relentless threat to public health, ecosystems, and agricultural livelihoods. Addressing Iraq’s clean water shortage is therefore impossible without a fundamental reform of how the country manages its wastewater.

Given the scale of the problem, the government must initiate urgent reforms in governance, infrastructure, and enforcement to halt the degradation of Iraq’s rivers and protect public health. The following eight recommendations provide a concrete roadmap to transform wastewater management from a chronic failure into a pillar of national water security:

Prioritize and fast-track wastewater treatment infrastructure in upstream provinces, especially the Kurdistan Region. This is critical because untreated sewage released upstream contaminates water for millions downstream. Federal and regional governments must collaborate to secure funding and overcome political and budgetary disputes.
Accelerate the construction of sewage collection networks. Some treatment plants are non-operational because connecting pipeline networks are incomplete. Expanding household coverage, particularly in rural areas, is essential to stop the direct disposal of waste into the environment.
Decouple water infrastructure investment from political conflicts. Treat wastewater management as a non-negotiable national security priority for public health and stability, ensuring consistent funding even during budgetary disputes.
Invest in operational capacity and electricity resilience. Address chronic staffing shortages, provide specialized training for plant crews, and secure reliable power supplies to keep existing and new treatment facilities functioning continuously.
Enforce regulations against industrial and medical waste discharge. Strengthen monitoring and enforcement to prevent hazardous pollutants from factories and healthcare facilities from entering sewage systems and waterways untreated.
Launch public awareness campaigns on sewage system misuse. Educate which overwhelm and contaminate systems.
Adopt an integrated national water management strategy. Recognize that water security is impossible without effective wastewater treatment. This strategy must coordinate between federal and regional authorities and address the entire river basin from source to sea.

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إقرأ التقرير بالعربية

To prove that solutions are within reach, EPIC has partnered with Waterkeepers Iraq to complete a mobile wastewater treatment demonstration unit. The compact system is designed to be affordable and easy to operate, capable of processing up to 5 cubic meters of raw sewage per day. Built by the acclaimed Kurdish Iraqi designer Sabah Ahmad, this innovative system is a powerful rebuttal to inaction. It physically demonstrates that Iraq already possesses the technical expertise to transform raw sewage into safe water for agriculture and household use.