美国国家公共电台 NPR You Probably Don't Want To Know About Haiti's Sewage Problems

 

DON GONYEA, HOST:

Port-au-Prince, Haiti is a city of more than 3 million people with no sewer¹ system. International donors² have spent millions of dollars on infrastructure³ meant to help the situation. But a multi-year plan to build sewage treatment plants all over the country has stalled. And residents say things are getting worse. Rebecca Hersher reports.

REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE⁴: Port-au-Prince's low cinderblock housing projects are the frontline of the sewage problem in the city. Project Drouillard or Project D is hopping⁵ on a sunny Friday afternoon. Men are playing dominoes. Kids are shooting marbles in the narrow dirt alleyways.

(CROSSTALK)

HERSHER: The sound of dance practice spills out onto the street.

(SOUNDBITE OF AMBIENT NOISE)

HERSHER: The zinc-roofed buildings here are tightly packed along a canal where people throw trash and plastic bags full of human waste. There's an outhouse for every 10 to 20 homes. Around the corner is about a foot of hardened mud inside a row of abandoned houses.

GABRIEL MONTREUIL: (Through interpreter) See the dirt, mud, trash? It's because we had two floods in April - one on Good Friday and one on Easter. No house was spared.

HERSHER: Gabriel Montreuil (ph) has lived here his whole life. He says every time it rains, raw sewage floods his home. It's scary. Among other dangers, there's a cholera⁶ epidemic⁷ in Haiti. And the floods are getting worse.

MONTREUIL: (Through interpreter) The first time, it was 1-foot high. When it came back, it was 2 feet. And this time, it was 3 feet. As the adult, I needed to save the lives of my children.

HERSHER: The family slept on the street for a night and then came back to clean up. Montrieul blames the floods on sewage and trash clogging⁸ canals that run through Project D. You can smell them. One of Gabriel's neighbors, who goes by Calypso, takes me over to see the nearest canal.

CALYPSO: (Through interpreter) Right here, the flood killed seven people in April.

HERSHER: Is there human waste in here?

CALYPSO: Everything. Everything.

HERSHER: Everything goes in the canal. The raw sewage should be trucked out to a sewage treatment plant. But there's no government-run sewage disposal operation. And most of the formal waste removal is done by private companies. Most people can't afford it. And international aid money isn't available to help with that. As a result, the government estimates less than 10 percent of Port-au-Prince's waste ever makes it to the treatment facility, which is called Goat Mountain. It's pretty simple - just three basins that slowly use the sun and wind to disinfect raw sewage over the course of months. But the manager, Ricky Constant, says it's not designed to handle such small volumes of waste.

RICKY CONSTANT: (Through interpreter) So now the basins are not working properly the way they are supposed to be working.

HERSHER: When the level gets too low, the water just sits there instead of flowing from one basin to the next. And there are other design flaws like a mountain of trash that's accumulated next to where companies dump raw sewage.

CONSTANT: (Through interpreter) One of our issues is we shouldn't have that much trash here.

HERSHER: Trash and sewage often travel together in Haiti. Remember, most people aren't using toilets. They're using pit latrines and throwing other stuff in there, too. But the treatment plant is only designed to handle human waste.

CONSTANT: (Through interpreter) This is a misunderstanding, a bad approach of the sanitation⁹ issue in Haiti.

HERSHER: Why do you think that happened?

CONSTANT: (Through interpreter) Haitian engineers made the conception of this site. But it's a copycat from foreign countries. This is the first experience of Haitians dealing¹⁰ with that.

HERSHER: This kind of international influence is a big reason for the stalled sanitation infrastructure plan in Haiti. Since the 2010 earthquake here, the expertise¹¹ and money for sewage plants have come from outside the country. Donors with good intentions nonetheless fund projects that are not always a good fit for what Port-au-Prince needs. Up the road, a second identical sewage treatment plant is overgrown with weeds.

I wonder when the last time this gate was open. Oh, it's getting stuck in the trees.

The Spanish government paid $2.1 million to build this plant, starting in 2010. It's been closed since 2013 because of engineering problems.

The pools are full of really green water. And the birds love it.

Even though it's not working, funding the plant appears to be a point of pride for the Spanish government. Queen Sofia even visited it when it was under construction. And even with the demand for sewage treatment facilities falling, Spain is planning to spend another $617,000 to fix this facility. Construction begins in the fall. Back in Project D, Gabriel Montreuil feels abandoned.

MONTREUIL: (Through interpreter) In other countries, they take care of the population. Here, we rely on God. We cannot rely on the government.

HERSHER: He doesn't see the sewage treatment plants or the international money. He just sees a Haitian government that doesn't seem to listen to people like him. For NPR News, I'm Rebecca Hersher in Port-au-Prince

GONYEA: Their story was supported by a grant from Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

1 sewer   

n.排水沟，下水道

参考例句：

• They are tearing up the street to repair a sewer. 他们正挖开马路修下水道。
• The boy kicked a stone into the sewer. 那个男孩把一石子踢进了下水道。

2 donors   

n.捐赠者( donor的名词复数 )；献血者；捐血者；器官捐献者

参考例句：

• Please email us to be removed from our active list of blood donors. 假如你想把自己的名字从献血联系人名单中删去，请给我们发电子邮件。
• About half this amount comes from individual donors and bequests. 这笔钱大约有一半来自个人捐赠及遗赠。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 infrastructure   

n.下部构造，下部组织，基础结构，基础设施

参考例句：

• We should step up the development of infrastructure for research.加强科学基础设施建设。
• We should strengthen cultural infrastructure and boost various types of popular culture.加强文化基础设施建设，发展各类群众文化。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 hopping   

n. 跳跃 动词hop的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The clubs in town are really hopping. 城里的俱乐部真够热闹的。
• I'm hopping over to Paris for the weekend. 我要去巴黎度周末。

6 cholera   

n.霍乱

参考例句：

• The cholera outbreak has been contained.霍乱的发生已被控制住了。
• Cholera spread like wildfire through the camps.霍乱在营地里迅速传播。

7 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。

8 clogging   

堵塞，闭合

参考例句：

• This process suffers mainly from clogging the membrane. 这种过程的主要问题是滤膜的堵塞。
• And you know that eyewitness that's been clogging up the airwaves? 你知道那个充斥着电视广播的目击证人？

9 sanitation   

n.公共卫生，环境卫生，卫生设备

参考例句：

• The location is exceptionally poor,viewed from the sanitation point.从卫生角度来看，这个地段非常糟糕。
• Many illnesses are the result,f inadequate sanitation.许多疾病都来源于不健全的卫生设施。

10 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

11 expertise   

n.专门知识(或技能等)，专长

参考例句：

• We were amazed at his expertise on the ski slopes.他斜坡滑雪的技能使我们赞叹不已。
• You really have the technical expertise in a new breakthrough.让你真正在专业技术上有一个全新的突破。