文章说，目前伊拉克各地，每天的供水仅能满足居民用水需要的60％～80％，减少项目将极大地影响伊拉克的利益。

    整个来看，国会已拨款大约43亿美元，用于伊拉克的水与公用工程建设，其中已经投放了大约28亿美元。

    伊拉克政府负责巴格达外水工程的市政和公共工程部部长Nesreen Berwari在该文章中说，其中的很大一块资金将用于管理和安全,我们计划的任何事情，由于预算的限制，能够开工建设的仅有一半。

    隶属于国防部和美国驻巴格达使馆的项目和合同办公室的发言人斯蒂夫说，由于第一次有关项目规模的评估是在今年年初叛乱爆发前做的，所以目前估计的安全费用和其他一般管理的费用已经增加了一些

    但是，他告诉纽约时报，他的办公室和承包商正寻求改革途径，减少费用上升带来的影响，例如寻求新的捐助人或对工程设计进行修改。

    斯蒂夫说，没有理由在数字问题上争论，安全费用不是我们能控制的事情，那是由敌人控制的。

原文如下：

$4.3 billion in Iraqi water projects at risk

BAGHDAD, IRAQ ?Rising security costs for Western contractors are cutting into funding for 90 planned water projects, Iraqi officials have told The New York Times.

Scaling back projects would vastly reduce benefits for a country that currently meets no more than 60 to 80 percent of the demand for water on a given day, depending on the region, the article said.

Over all, about $4.3 billion has been set aside by Congress for water and public works in Iraq, of which about $2.8 billion has been released so far, the paper reported.

"A big chunk of that money is going to administration and security," Nesreen Berwari, the minister of municipalities and public works, the sector of the Iraqi government that has responsibility for water projects outside Baghdad, said in the article. "Everything we planned for, because of the budget limitations, what's available for construction is half," Berwari told the paper.

Steve Susens, a spokesman for the Project and Contracting Office, which is affiliated with both the Defense Department and the US Embassy in Baghdad, said in the article that estimates for security costs and other overhead had risen somewhat since the first estimates on the size of the projects were made early this year, before the insurgency erupted.

But, he told the paper that the office and its contractors were seeking innovative ways of softening the impact of the rising costs, like seeking new donors or reworking the engineering designs.

"There's no reason to dispute the figures," Susens said of the Iraqi calculations. He added that "security costs are the one thing we can't control. It's controlled by the enemy," the paper reported.