East African towns polluting Lake Victoria with sewage

As the clock ticks towards the World Habitat Day on Monday, Kisumu residents remain a worried lot.

More than half the town does not enjoy the benefit of a sewerage line, according to statistics obtained from the Lake Victoria South Water Services Board.

The case is worse in slums, where less than 20 per cent are covered. The absence of the service has had a profound effect on the environment, with Lake Victoria as the worst casualty.

Human settlements officer at UN Habitat Cecilia Kinuthia-Njenga says a recent review of towns in the Lake Victoria Basin showed that most councils lack water and sewer services.

The pollution of the lake has intensified due to high population growth. Kisumu, Mwanza and Kampala have been singled out as the worst polluters, according to a study conducted by the Kenya Marine Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI).

The director of the institute’s Kisumu centre, Dr John Gichuki, says the towns’ waste water treatment can no longer cope with the waste generated.

Dr Gichuki says the treatment system in Kisumu, for instance, is overloaded. “The system serves over two million residents, while it was designed for a population of 20,000,” he explains.

The bulk of the town’s waste water, including most of the town centre, is managed by the Kisat Waste Water Treatment Plant.

The only other treatment plant serving the eastern part of town, is the Nyalenda Lagoon, built in the 1950s, with a capacity of 6,000 cubic metres. The only improvement made since then was the addition of oil interceptors in 1986.

It became inoperational 10 years later, and remained in this state until late last year when half of it was revived in the first phase of the Kisumu Water and Sanitation Project. For the years that the plant was not functional, raw sewage flowed into River Kisat.

Efforts to get the treatment system back on track during this period were steeped in controversy. It had been earmarked for inclusion in the first phase of the Lake Victoria Management Programme that ended in 2005, but was later dropped.

According to those familiar with the happenings, it was left out after it seemed like formation of a management company, one of the project donors’ preconditions, was taking too long.

Even after its revival, the Kisat Plant is only partly efficient. Mr Bernard Owiti, the technical services manager of Kisumu Water and Sewerage Company (the town’s water and sewerage services provider) has in the past admitted that sewage discharged into the Kisat river that drains into the lake, was not fully treated.

“Only half of the plant is operational and though it reduces the biological oxygen demand to reasonable levels, it does not meet the set standards,” said Mr Owiti.

“There is no visible change in the appearance of the river now, but the half of the treatment plant that is working has reduced pollution considerably,” Mr Owiti said.

The situation is complicated by lack of a proper laboratory to monitor the river’s physical and chemical characteristics.

The company relied on a laboratory belonging to Lake Victoria South Water Services Board, which was burnt down at the height of the post-election violence.

However, Mr Owiti said, more would be done to reduce the pollution load on the river. Already, the plant is earmarked for full rehabilitation in the second phase of the project expected to start in August at a cost of Sh1.5 billion.

Assorted waste

“We have also written to factories and fish traders to include pre-treatment processes on their waste before releasing them to the waste water treatment plant,” the technical services manager says.

In the meantime, residents of Obunga slums have to bear the nauseating stench from the river as it meanders towards the lake.

Apart from the Kisat plant waste, the dark coloured waters of River Kisat carry tonnes of assorted waste.

From the effluent of Kisumu’s industrial area, to the guts of fish dumped into the river by traders dealing in fish products, the river dumps a concoction of pollutants into Lake Victoria.

The lake supplies most of Kisumu residents with water and with such a magnitude of pollution, the cost of purifying the water increases.

Little wonder, Kisumu is prone to cholera and other water-borne diseases. Not much is being done to address the problem and communities have been left to their own devices.

Civil society organisations have joined in the fight against pollution. They want the National Environmental Management Authority (Nema) and the council to take action against polluters.

The lobbies have threatened to seek court orders barring industries from discharging effluent into the river, which flows through Industrial Area.

Dr Gichuki recommends an evaluation of the present conditions and operations of waste water treatment plants to improve their performance.

At the same time, the coordinator of the Kisumu Land and Housing Taskforce, Mr Francis Onyango, says that a 1,000-signature petition is being prepared and would soon be presented to the Environment minister.

Unattainable dream

To the slum dwellers in Obunga and many others in Kisumu, who make up 30 per cent of the town population, the theme of this year’s Habitat Day celebrations, “Harmonious Cities for 2008”, remains an unattainable dream.

According to the UN, harmonious cities that it hopes to foster must strengthen environmental conservation.

The UN chose the theme to raise awareness about the problems of rapid urbanisation and its impact on the environment as people move to towns looking for a better life.

It’s a rallying call for widespread use of new energy-efficient and environmental-friendly technologies to reduce town pollution, now lacking in Kisumu.

The UN warns: “There should also be no illusion that cities have the greatest impact on the environment and climate change.

And where they are poorly managed, with weak governance structures, it is their citizens and their surroundings that suffer most.”