Sharjah24 – AFP: The road meandering towards Gaza Valley is notorious for the stench of pollution choking the plant and animal life that once flourished in the Palestinian enclave's biggest wetland.
That is expected to change after the sullied habitat was declared Gaza's first nature reserve, set for a UN-backed, decade long clean-up effort under the territory's Hamas Islamist rulers.
"The valley will return to its beautiful natural state" for local people to walk through and enjoy, said Jaber Abu Hajeer, the mayor of the area known as Wadi Gaza.
The fouling of the valley with raw sewerage, wastewater and rubbish is a consequence of chronic under-development in the strip that has been blockaded by Israel since 2007.
Gaza's poor infrastructure cannot manage the waste produced by a population that has rapidly grown to 2.3 million.
For more than three decades, sewage was pumped straight into Wadi Gaza and parts of its became dumping grounds for household waste and construction debris.
Until last year, some 16,000 cubic metres of wastewater were pumped into the valley every day, say local authorities, causing a range of health problems for families living along the waterway that empties into the Mediterranean Sea.
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