(At the end of this article are a some of my personal experiences with KBR and potentially contaminated water.)

Some US soldiers forced to steal water in Iraq

Rations and problems trigger desperate measures to survive intense heat

10:54 PM CDT on Monday, May 11, 2009
By Jeremy Rogalski / 11 News Defenders

HOUSTON — Take Houston’s heat on a miserable summer day and add 40 degrees, making temperatures 130 or more.

Next, add an extra 100 pounds of life-protecting gear to your body: bulletproof vests, guns and ammunition.

And then imagine not having enough water around to drink.

Click HERE to watch the video coverage of this article.

Stories of short supplies have haunted the U.S. military throughout the war in Iraq—things like inadequate body armor or unshielded Hummers. But while many soldiers say they had good access to water and even Gatorade, the 11 News Defenders discovered that others, stationed all over the country and during all phases of this desert war, say something else was often missing.

“We were rationed two bottles of water a day,” said Army Staff Sgt. Dustin Robey, referring to 1 to 1.5 liter bottles.

And he said that wasn’t nearly enough.

“You’ll see guys throw up, you’ll see them pass out,” he said.

Robey said it started early on in the war, and that he and other soldiers are paying the price to this day. In 2003, he said soldiers were given what was the equivalent of only a half gallon of water to survive on a day—all while dodging bullets in the blistering heat.

“We were on missions, I ran out of water,” Robey said.

That’s no surprise. According to an Army Fort Bragg training document on preventing heat casualties in desert climates, water losses can reach 15 liters, or four gallons, per day per soldier. Additionally, Survival, a 1957 Department of the Army field manual, states “in hot deserts, you need a minimum of one gallon (of water) per day” just to survive.

So Robey said his company were forced to improvise.

“We were inside a house, I’d stick my head under the faucet and drink,” he said.

But Iraqi water is often untreated and can cause intestinal sickness.

“We had a real rash of dysentery go through my company. I’d say 50 to 60 guys got it,” Robey said.

But what about getting water from the mobile water treatment trucks the military refers to as “water buffaloes”?

A number of soldiers told 11 News that it was often difficult to locate those trucks in the field, partly because they say there was a shortage of them.  In addition, many soldiers claim that a lot of the water dispensed by those trucks was so heavily treated with chemicals that “no one could keep it down.”

Robey said eventually they became desperate.

“It really hit me the day I was with my commander and we’re stealing water,” Robey said, describing how they raided supplies at the Baghdad International Airport.

To get there, they had to take one of the riskiest routes in Iraq at that time, riddled with road bombs and roadside insurgents.

But they reached the airport and found plenty of water. It was in the hands of civilian contractors, who Robey claims were supposed to be distributing it to soldiers.

“You just had pallets upon pallets upon pallets of (bottled) water,” Robey said.

Water shortages continued in other parts of Iraq at other locations too, according to other soldiers. Private Bryan Hannah recalled a troubling situation in 2007:

Private Hannah: “My sergeant told my lieutenant we didn’t have enough water and he said go find some.”

11 News: “What does ‘go find some’ mean?”

Private Hannah: “It means ‘if you don’t want to die, then go find some water.’”

Hannah and fellow soldiers did just that, finding it once again at a civilian contractor facility.

“We’d just run out and start grabbing cases of water and start throwing them in the gunner’s hatch,” said Hannah.

“This sounds like something that definitely needs to be looked into,” said Dr. Stephen Fadem, a kidney specialist with Kidney Associates PLLC, who also teaches at the Veterans Administration.

“If soldiers are saying that they are not getting adequate water, that needs to be taken seriously,” Dr. Fadem said.

In the short term, Fadem said you could collapse, and in the long term, “they may end up with kidney injury.”

The same training document from Fort Bragg details those very health concerns. It states chronic dehydration is associated with kidney stones, urinary infection, rectal afflictions and skin problems.

“This can be very challenging,” said Dr. Fadem.

But 11 News identified another problem with water in Iraq—dirty water in sinks and showers soldiers used.

“I mean it’s yellow, and it’s filthy,” said Sgt. Casey J. Porter.

Porter, an aspiring filmmaker, took video footage of rust-colored water from faucets at Camp Taji in 2008. By that time in the war, Taji appeared less like a war zone and more like a mall.

“You can eat Subway, Burger King, you can buy a $1,200 Oakley watch, but you can’t have clean water to brush your teeth with, what’s the real priority here,” Sgt. Porter said.

Turns out, at many similar bases, the water was supposed to be processed by Houston-based company KBR. In an internal KBR report, the company sites “massive programmatic issues” with water for personal hygiene dating back to 2005. It outlines how there was no formalized training for anyone involved with water operations, and one camp, Ar Ramadi, had no disinfection for shower water whatsoever.

“That water was two to three times as contaminated as the water out of the Euphrates River,” said former KBR employee Ben Carter.

Carter, a water purification specialist, was the one to blow the whistle on it all. He said he first noticed a problem when he found a live maggot in a base toilet at Camp Ar Ramadi. He subsequently discovered that instead of using chlorinated water, the soldiers’ sinks and showers were pouring out untreated wastewater.

“You’re standing in what’s essentially a sauna of microorganisms. Your eyes, ears, anyplace there’s a cut, a person would be at risk of containing a pathogen,” Carter said.

But when he wanted to inform U.S. forces, Carter said KBR supervisors gave him a verbal lashing.

“The military is none of your f-ing concern, uh, which was shocking to me,” Carter said.

11 News asked military officials about the water problems in Iraq. In a statement by the Multi-National Force in Iraq press office states: “We have a proven system that works. Commanders at all levels do their utmost to provide the necessary resources required to sustain the force.”

KBR in a statement, told 11 News a Department of Defense Inspector General report concluded “KBR has (since) satisfied applicable water standards,” adding that “the DoD has not found any illness which it attributes to water in Iraq.”

But tell that to Staff Sgt. Dustin Robey.

“I take 26 different types of pills a day,” Robey said. “I’ve had kidney stones, almost on a daily basis.”

He said he’s passed hundreds of them since returning from Iraq.

“It feels like someone’s stabbing you in the side just over and over and over again,” Robey said.

He blames the lack of, and quality of water for his poor health, and the hardest part of it all is the toll it’s taken on his family.

“There’s days when I can’t go out and play with my children outside, I’m in that much pain,” Robey said.

As for his military career? It’s over. The Army forced him to retire because of his condition and slashed his pay to the point where is family is staring at foreclosure and has moved in with relatives.

The former staff sergeant’s only hope? That the next time our country does it the right way. And Afghanistan, is just around the corner.

“If we can’t provide enough water, enough materials for guys to get through the day, to where they don’t have long-term effects for guys like myself, then why even fight the war,” Robey said.

Now again, many other soldiers told us a different story: That they had no problem getting enough drinkable water. However, we found that the differing experiences seemed to have a great deal to do with when the soldier was deployed there, what part of the country he was in, and what his assignment was.

Either way, kidney stones have become such a widespread problem among the troops that the military has set up a medical treatment center in Iraq to treat them. (End of article. Click HERE for the original article)

My personal experiences and observations with regard to water: When I first landed in the Green Zone on July 26, 2004, I was basically dropped off on the corner, some guys that happened to be standing there, pointed me in the direction of HR and Billeting (housing). It was about 130 degrees, I hadn’t slept more than a couple hours in the last three days. All I wanted was a shower and a bed. I was assigned to a room in the  barracks. Three bunk beds in a room with a bathroom and shower room at the end of the hall. I  stood under the shower for what seemed like hours. I remember I couldn’t get the water cool enough. I had all the hot water off and the cold water was still warm. It didn’t take me too long to figure that out. The heat of the day warms the cold water in the pipes. There is no cold water in Iraq during the summer!!

The bathrooms were clean enough and it didn’t occur to me to ask if the water was potable (drinkable). There were no signs that it wasn’t, so I showered, brushed my teeth and drank the water….for about two weeks. NO ONE told me the water in the entire Green Zone was Baghdad City water and NOT POTABLE!!! There was one ROWPU (water purification unit) at Camp Prosperity in the Green Zone. I think that water was used for the DFAC (dining facilities) and making ice.  About two weeks later I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth with tap water and someone else came in with a bottle of water. They started brushing their teeth with it and asked why I was using that “nasty” tap water. When she got done telling me everything that was in the water, Hepatitis, Cholera, Typhoid, and who knows what else, I though I was going to throw up. I was PISSED!!! I went to Safety and HR and demanded to know why I was never told. Why there were no warning signs in the bathrooms. I was told they weren’t going to put up signs because they didn’t want to make a big deal about it and freak people out. They knew I would find out about it sooner or later. “What?” I was stunned at the apparent lack of concern and total disregard for the safety of not only KBR employees but the client as well. I put up signs in our bathroom to inform other new people, they were taken down and I got reprimanded.  This was my FIRST clear example of just how much KBR didn’t care about their employees or their safety. Sometime in 2006 a State Department employee was in the Green Zone on a short visit. When she realized she was brushing her teeth in Tigres River water she raised hell. Then all of a sudden, signs went up everywhere!! Go figure. So for at least two years that I know of, hundreds of thousands of State Department, Defense Department, US soldiers, other DoD contractors, KBR, and virtually every coalition country was brushing their teeth and showering in Tigres River Water also known as Baghdad City water!

Now let’s talk about the bottled water for a minute. Pallets of over priced bottled water was allowed to sit in full sun. With no protection from the elements. It would sit there and boil until the seals broke. You had to inspect each bottle to make sure it wasn’t cloudy or that the seal was in tact. So much bottled water was being wasted because of exposure.  Some time in 2006 I think, a water storage facility was established. Just a tin roof over pallets. I asked time and time again why the US didn’t have their own bottling plant in Iraq. I think that would have been just too cost effective.

Here is a Ben Carter video talking about the water issues in Iraq. Ben Carter is suing Halliburton/KBR for not providing the troops and civilians the drinking water they were being paid to provide. Click HERE to read that suit.

Tell me you water horror stories.

Ms Sparky

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