My Boss at KBR: "The military is none of our fucking concern."
Posted by Brave New Films, Brave New Films at 9:47 AM on July 12, 2008.
Ben Carter sheds light on KBR's atrocities.
From Ben Carter:
I had been operating my own company in the fall of 2004, when my 20-year-old son suddenly died from a bad combination of prescription medication. This tragedy caused my marriage to end only a month later. With little reason to stay in Utah, I pursued the opportunity of going to work for Halliburton, because I had gotten word that Halliburton was looking for people with expertise in water purification to operate their reverse osmosis water purification units (ROWPU). I had extensive experience with a wide range of water purification technologies, and I was attracted to the idea of providing a valuable service to our soldiers serving in Iraq.
At the time, I was very excited at the prospect of being an employee once again, doing great things with providing clean safe water to U.S. troops and seeing some exciting places around the world. This was before I learned anything about
Halliburton and their business practices.
If you recall, in late 2004 the war in Iraq was thought to be over after the declaration of "mission accomplished" by President George W. Bush. This impression was clearly wrong once I arrived, and I was sent to the base at Ar Ramadi. The talk around the water coolers was that the KBR camp there was getting hit on a regular schedule with rocket and mortar fire. This was a surprise to me since my recruiter had told me that I would be sent to the green zone in Baghdad. When I arrived in Ar Ramadi I was anxious to get to work right away. It was at the air base, Al Asad, that I got my first indication that things were askew with their water treatment plants.
- snip -
A big problem with re-using the contaminated waste water is the increase of contaminants previously in the raw water. For example, let's say there are 100
giardia cysts (giardia is an infectious parasite which lodges in the intestines and causes vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss and dehydration) in each gallon of raw water run into the R.O. unit. We could reasonably expect the R.O. to remove 90% to 95% of the cysts, which would be flushed out in the reject effluent drain line. This process would therefore produce about 1/3 gallon of very high quality drinking water and the other 2/3 gallon was being sent back to the collection tank for the water plant. When they dumped that water with a now higher concentration of cysts back into the feed water, eventually the treated drinking water and non-potable water would no longer be safe to use. Eventually that number of 100 cysts per gallon would become 1,000 per gallon, then 10,0000, etc.
This water contains a high concentration of all the dissolved contaminants present in the raw water. Heavy metals, pesticides, bacteria, viruses, etc. Which is why it's considered a potentially hazardous waste product. It was this water that I personally witnessed being dumped back into the supply water at the KBR water plant in Al Asad!
The non-potable water was delivered to the base daily by KBR trucks driving outside the base to a small military ROWPU unit operating next to the Euphrates river temporarily until KBR could get their big ROWPU units on-line. I had been told that this water was chlorinated and safe by my supervisor ROWPU foreman Walter Meyers. I eventually discovered that not to be true. Then, I found out that KBR site management was aware of this fact the entire time, knowingly compromising the safety of the thousands of troops who had water storage tanks all over the base being pumped with contaminated water each day.
After my initial shock of discovering that KBR was delivering contaminated water to the unsuspecting consumers, I immediately went to work first by decontaminating the water system and then asking questions to military personnel in charge of their ROWPU unit....
Please keep reading @
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/91281/#moreAnd...
Tell the DoD you don't want your tax money going to fund KBR's abuses by
e-mailing the DoD's Chief Financial Officer, Tina Jonas, and urging her not to pay KBR until the Justice Department completes a full, public investigation of KBR and its abuses.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/91281/#more--------------------------------
CUT KBR OFF!!! @
http://progressivefuture.org/cut-off-KBR?id4=BNF
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