Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Africa Water, Sanitation May -June 2014 Vol.9 No.3 | Page 10

NEWS in brief

Around Africa

River leaves.
The raw sewage was piped to these two plants, and trunk
sewers need to follow natural drainage unless expensive
pumping is in place, and was turned at these two plants into
dry solid waste that was easy to get rid of, and very clean
water that could be discharged into the rivers without any
problem.
The new plants won engineering prizes, and were easy
to maintain and easy to expand, being modular. As the
population grew all that the city needed to do was add more
units at each plant. At the same time plans were in place to
upgrade the sewage treatment plant next to the Nyatsime
River, so Chitungwiza could also discharge clean water,
Water crisis in Zimbabwe
and build a similar plant near where the Ruwa River meets
in Zimbabwe, and are all upstream of their main supply the Manyame so Ruwa and eastern Harare could also stop
dams on the Manyame River. The combination creates great polluting.
risks, and great opportunities. This huge concentration of
people and economic activity requires plenty
of clean water and efficient waste disposal.
The risks are that we will pollute our water
until it is poisonous, or run out of fresh water
if we cannot recycle. The opportunities,
thanks to the city and the towns being in the
catchment of the water supply, are that we
can ensure decent water supplies for evergrowing populations at the lowest possible
cost, even if that cost is a little more than we
are paying now.
Unfortunately, for over a decade we have
been maximizing the risks and minimizing
the opportunities.
Harare had a fairly dubious record over water
supplies and could grow until a little after
independence only because the Manyame
River had good flows in the rainy season and
had some good dam sites near Harare.
We took fresh water from the dams, used it,
processed it badly and then threw it back into
the river. From the 1970s that was banned,
so we threw it away on farms instead, and
started suffering water shortages as a result.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s Harare
suddenly shot from being an underperformer
when it came to water supply and sewage
disposal to the top of the league tables.
Major investments saw the construction of
extremely efficient activated sludge plants at
Firle, where the Mukuvisi River leaves the
city, and Crowborough, where the Marimba
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Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • June 2014