Zim: Kevin Woods comments on The Water Crisis in Bulawayo

[Kevin Woods sent me this. He has some interesting comments on the politics of the water crisis in Bulawayo.

I saw a few excerpts of Kevin's new book, thanks to Robb Ellis's eagle eye. Boy... this book will be something! It mentions Kevin hearing people being taken off to the gallows and hearing them being executed as he himself was sitting on Death Row. Jan]

Hello Jan and Robb
You may be of interest in this. It is just so typical of Africa north of
the Limpopo. Especially as Bulawayo lies in a tribal area with which Mugabe
has huge hatred, since the beginning of time. Hence the state does nothing
to develop Bulawayo. This even happened whilst Joshua Nkomo was vice
president, and he came from Bulawayo. Nkomo was, after the Unity accord in
1987, solidly on Mugabe's gravy train and would not rock the boat, even for
his own people.
Have a lekker day
Cheers,
Kevin

The Water Crisis in Bulawayo

The last time a new water source was constructed for the supply of raw water
to Bulawayo was over 30 years ago, apart from the aquifer scheme that was
meant to deliver 40 000 cubic metres of water a day but which has never
exceeded 16 000 cubic metres. At that time the City was much smaller than it
is today and consumption demand has more than quadrupled to 150 000 to 200
000 cubic metres of water a day.

When the supply dams of Bulawayo were constructed (mainly by the Bulawayo
City Council) they were designed to hold three years supplies of raw water
for the City. Because the City lies in a semi arid zone, this is considered
the minimum needed to ensure that supplies could be maintained over the
period of a series of drier than normal seasons.

Given the growth in consumption, local residents and the City Council have
expressed concern about the need for new raw water sources and many
different schemes have been proposed and attempted. The supply of water from
the Zambezi River has been talked about since the 1920's and has been the
subject of several studies and investment proposals. More recently the
Gwaai/Shangani Dam has been proposed together with a pipeline to the City.
No progress has been made on any of these grandiose schemes.

Now, after several years of inadequate run off (as opposed to rainfall -
they are not directly related) the 5 existing supply dams are nearly
exhausted. Three have been decommissioned and of the two remaining sources
only one (Insiza) has significant water resources left. The main difficulty
being the fact that this dam is unable to deliver sufficient raw water to
the system because of limitations to the flow which the gravity fed line can
pass.

As result, Bulawayo is now receiving less than a quarter of its needs and
hundreds of thousands of homes are without a consistent supply of clean
water from Municipal sources. This affects the high-density townships most
as these are often at the very end of the distribution system. If run off
this summer is again inadequate, the City could run out of water altogether
and this would have catastrophic implications.

There are four alternative sources that could help alleviate the existing
shortages. The first would be the installation of pumps at Insiza Dam to
push water deliveries from this dam to 70 000 cubic metres a day. The second
would be boreholes - several hundred have been drilled in the City area and
another 70 on a major aquifer to the north of the City. A number of
boreholes have been drilled in the high-density areas in recent years and
fitted with hand pumps and these are being used today to try and meet the
basic needs of the communities in which they are located.

If the State had consented to the request by the City a year ago to declare
the City a Water Emergency Area then the Council could have taken control of
borehole water supplies and this might help in certain areas with good
ground water.

The aquifer could also supply some 15 000 cubic metres of water a day - 10
per cent of demand and a 25 per cent increase in present water supplies but
Zinwa - the Authority that controls the system, has allowed this system to
fall into disrepair and despite the allocation of funds to the Authority a
year ago for rehabilitation purposes, no progress has been made and only 2
000 cubic metres of water is being received from this source.

The third option would be the supply of water from the Mtshabezi Dam in the
Matopo Hills some 25 kilometers from the nearest water intake point for the
Bulawayo pump station at Ncema. In an emergency such as this, some 30 000
cubic metres of water a day could be pumped from the dam to the City even
though the long term allocation of water from this source is only 5 000
cubic metres per day. Despite promises, progress on this project has been
slow and there are no signs that it will be ready in time to assist with the
situation in the near future.

In the longer term the City has accepted proposals to recycle wastewater
recovered from its effluent system and pump the recovered water to the
purification plant for blending and processing prior to distribution to the
City. This project, which could be developed as a public/private
partnership, is capable of yielding up to 60 000 cubic metres of water per
day and would extend the life of the existing raw water supply dams. An
initial phase based on the effluent plants at SAST 1 and 2 would yield 20
000 cubic metres of water a day and this would constitute the fourth option
for the City

The immediate implementation of these four measures would create the space
for the City to pursue new raw water sources, as appropriate, in the region.
There are several options for this that could be considered. However, no
progress on such a system is possible if the State persists in its demand
for the City to relinquish control of its water purification and
reticulation system as well as its effluent system to Zinwa without
compensation.

So the people of Bulawayo suffer water shortages and the resultant threats
to public health while the State dithers over new projects and denies the
City the capability to do the job itself as it always did in the past. Any
new administration that comes to power in Zimbabwe will have to make swift
decisions to remedy this situation and one thing seems quite clear - the
energy and capacity of the people of the City must be harnessed to pursue
the solutions to the water crisis in order to ensure it does not recur.

An emergency programme could be implemented immediately by a public/private
sector partnership to undertake the development of the four options outlined
above. These are: -

1. Take over the aquifer from Zinwa and refurbish all boreholes and get the
yield up to 25 000 cubic metres per day.
2. Install high volume pumps at Insiza to raise deliveries from this dam by
25 000 cubic metres per day.
3. Construct a pump station at Mtshabezi Dam and a 25 kilometer pipeline to
deliver 25 000 cubic metres per day to Ncema.
4. Install a recovery system for wastewater at SAST to recover 15 000 cubic
metres of water per day for recycling to Criterion Water Works.

The combined effect of this operation would be to restore water supplies to
Bulawayo to 140 000 cubic metres per day - enough for restricted full supply
to the City. Since the State clearly does not have the capacity or the
resources to undertake this emergency programme it should be left to the
private sector working with the Bulawayo City Council. Under this
arrangement Zinwa would revert to maintaining the 6 supply dams for Bulawayo
and would wholesale raw water to the City from those dams.

Such an exercise would do nothing to obviate the necessity for the
construction of a new raw water source for the City and the alternatives for
such a project should be immediately re-examined. The possible projects
should be costed and evaluated on the basis of their ability to meet the
future needs of the City at a cost that when blended with the cost of water
from existing dams, is acceptable to the residents.

Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, 7th September 2007
Posted By: Jan
AfricanCrisis Webmaster
Author of: Government by Deception

Date Posted: Tuesday 11-Sep-2007
Being an ex-Bulawayan and from the same high school as Kevin I am concerned about the water shortages there. But one point has been overlooked. Illegal dams. When the so-called new farmers were given land they built dams without any permission on the rivers that supply dams such as Ncema. This seriously depleted the volume of water flowing into the supply dams. So you can add as many high volume pumps as you like (though I have no idea where these would come from and who would install them, maintain them etc)but if there is no water to pump the, the high volume pumps are not much use. That brings us to another point. What will power the new pumps? There's no fuel. Electricity is a luxury.

Clive Bloor
Maulden
UK