By Ngoni Shumba.
Mutare, Zimbabwe. (News Of The South) – Its old, run-down rotting sewage network is in dire need of upgrades and pipe replacements and there appears to be no end to the perpetual bursts.
Downstream communities have seen a gradual deterioration in the quality of its fresh water source since the early 1990s. Now the river is a black stinking thick strew of sewer.
Scientific papers have been written and published about the pollution and locals have won a court interdict against pollution of the river with a government arm on environmental management suing the city but this has not stopped the pollution.
Channelling the stinking slime into the streams is the only stop-gap measure they have being relying on for years as they battle a crunch resource shortage that is pushing its salary debt to employees to over $8 million.
Council has lost three court cases against pollution of the river initially from downstream communities through Zimbabwe Environmental Lawyers Association (ZELA) and Environment Africa then against Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) and by Environmental Management Agency (EMA).
The deluge of sewer is also one reason the downstream communities are not very sympathetic of the collapse of industry which is saving them from bigger volumes of toxic industrial waste.
Teresa Matsika, 66, says the loss of Sakubva river as a fresh water source is limiting their livelihood options.
“We are not able to set up irrigation projects along the river in which we could use gravity to draw water because the river is just too dirty. Both the farmer and the consumer of the food that will be produced risk serious illness,” Matsika said.
She however said some desperate families have continued to use it but “their crop stinks of urine”.
“Some even plant sugarcane but eating it will be like drinking urine so they do not use it but sell it back into the city,” Matsika said.
Vendors at Sakubva vegetable market confirmed that they received a lot of garden produce from Dora that would have been produced along the river but never confess the source of the produce to their clients.
“We sell a lot of produce irrigated by Sakubva river. The produce is good and sells easily but we just are careful not to tell people that it would have been farmed along the dirty river otherwise no one would buy,” Susan Jaricha told News of the South.
Former Mutare City Council Town Clerk Obert Muzawazi once conceded that the city’s continued pollution of the river was “really an irresponsible thing to do on the part of council.”
Since the confession council has received a $9.6 million donation for expanding its water system and upgrading its sewage treatment facilities from a multi-donor fund under the World Bank and African Development Bank.
The money has been used to rehabilitate the city’s three sewage treatment plants which are Town, Sakubva and Gimboki with treatment capacity of 6.1, 3.8 and 23.9 mega litres per day respectively which were chocked with sand sedimentation meaning sewer was just washing over without being treated.
Environmental Management Agency (EMA) Manicaland Provincial Manager, Kingston Chitotombe said there has been a marked decline in the pollution of the river since the upgrade of the sewage system.
“Since the rivers have been polluted for years it will take some time for the river bed to be washed clean,” Chitotombe said.
But while officials think the upgrade of the sewage plants has ended pollution of the river the reality is that a lot of sewer continues to escape the sewage pipes into streams and Sakubva river before they even reach the treatment plant and are responsible for the river’s stinking black waters and not soaked in river bed sewer of yester-year.
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