Dubai/Fujairah: Troubling findings of high bacteria levels in wadi pools has led a university professor to call for free-roaming goats and donkeys to be fenced out of mountainous tourist areas in a bid to decrease faecal pollution in watering holes.
Bathing in a mountain pool is a "calculated risk", said Dr Sandra Knuteson, assistant professor of environment science and environment toxicologist at the American University of Sharjah (AUS), after she found bacteria such as E.coli and faecal coliform in popular wadi pools.
Such bacteria originate in the faeces of warm-blooded mammals, "like humans, goats or donkeys", she told Gulf News.
Ingesting the water is not recommended and swimming in the pools could result in illness.
Closed
The levels were so high that, if the samples had been taken from a beach in Europe or the US, it would have been closed to the public, said Dr Knuteson.
Levels of bacterial contamination should not be over 100 bacteria per 100 millilitres, and if five per cent of samples are contaminated, action is usually taken to keep people away, she said.
During her field research in Wadi Wurrayah in Fujairah, Wadi Shis near Khor Fakhan, Wadi Tayyabah on the Masafi-Dibba road and at Hatta Pools, she found the majority of her samples were more than 100 times above the level accepted by the World Health Organisation.
"At Hatta pools results were over 2,000 bacteria per 100ml continuously, but it's to be expected because of the goats that roam around the area. In some cases it went up to 10,000 bacteria per 100ml," she said.
"What was interesting was that incoming water had higher levels of bacteria than outgoing water. I put this down to the UV rays that sterilised the water a bit and killed some of the bacteria," said Dr Knuteson.
Stopping people and animals from defecating near the pools should be a top priority, which could be done by providing toilet facilities and fencing off tourist hotspots from grazing animals, she said.
She saw a person washing chickens in a small pool whilst further downstream other people were bathing. "This poses a risk of salmonella," she said.
Meanwhile, littering is still a problem with an overall lack of bins. "Education is still needed. There is a bin in the car park at Hatta Pools but assuming that people will carry all their waste back up the hill is very risky," said Dr Knuteson.
Recently she and a group of students from AUS went to Hatta Pools to pick up abandoned trash. The first time they collected more than 180kg of trash and a week later, they returned and walked away with another 80kg.
Big four
"The big four were glass, plastic, aluminium and miscellaneous waste like food wrappers," she said.
In reaction, an official from Fujairah Municipality said they have been looking into ways of keeping wadi pools clean.
"We have carried out a number of field studies ourselves, and we are considering a number of ideas to improve and better protect these environmentally delicate areas," said Ali Qasim, head of the environment section at Fujairah Municipality.
"Putting up fences around such a large, mountainous area will be very difficult and I don't think it has a precedent in similar wildlife protected areas in the Middle East," he said.
"As to providing public convenience facilities, that will also be fraught with a number of difficulties and will require a careful study of any possible environmental impact," he said.
