Mosul’s waste disposal plans cause controversy. It is being widely reported that an acrid stench hangs over the medical waste landfill site in Hay al-Arabi, north of Mosul, Iraq.

The local government in Ninawa can do nothing about it. Despite closing the place and covering it with soil in November 2010, people living  nearby can still smell the remains of decomposed waste accumulated over the last two decades. Clearly, this is not a properly engineered and managed sanitary or hazardous waste landfill site but a simple pit, a big pit, filled with vast quantities of decomposing waste.

The city of Mosul, which is still trying to recover from the security crisis of the last seven years, has yet another serious issue to grapple with – the problem of what to do with the increasing amount of waste, of all types, as services have been steadily getting worse.

Officials at the municipality state that the difficulties are due to a number of factors: Waste has to be collected from hundreds of neighbourhoods and residential areas, there is insufficient manpower and equipment, and the means of waste disposal are inadequate. I suspect that to those we might add a more general concern about the security conditions.

Almost 1.5 million people live in Mosul city, the capital of Ninawa province. “If everyone produces 900 grams of waste per day, the total quantity of waste produced is between 1200-1500 tons per day,” explains Abul Sattar al-Habbo, from the municipality.

Ninawa province has decided to implement a solid waste management project, the first phase of which will cost US$100 million. The project will have four phases and will be implemented on both sides of the Mosul city. But many people oppose the project because it means that a waste collection plant will be built in the centre of a residential area in the al-Rifaq neighbourhood, on the left side of Mosul city, close to four hospitals.

So, from complaints of smell and other nuisance surrounding the present, far from satisfactory, waste management arrangements it seems that there are many in Mosul concerned about possible nusiance from the proposed new and much improved waste disposal facilities.

With all of the serious problems that we think of when thinking about Iraq, this quite common NIMBY-like concern about planning issues seems remarkably normal!