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The Environmental Management Agency (Ema) has taken a drastic and excellent decision to ban use of water from Umguza River for some farming activities and all domestic use.This follows revelations that water from the Umguza catchment is gravely polluted by industrial and household effluent from Bulawayo.
The water is contaminated by metals and other pollutants that can potentially cause chronic illnesses in humans and animals consuming it.
Ema banned farmers from using the water for watering vegetables while those not necessarily using the river, but had wells or boreholes in a short radius along its course have also been handed a similar prohibition order. The agency did not like to leave anything to chance so it actually sealed boreholes along the river and stopped future sinking of them.
Consumption of the dirty water can cause diseases like liver failure and cancer which are chronic illnesses in humans. Livestock and wild animals also face potential danger as some that have consumed it have already died mysteriously.
We have published in these pages many stories about the serious pollution of water in the area and the dire consequences that its consumption, either directly through drinking, or indirectly by way of consuming vegetables grown using it. We were not listened to then, by and large.
It is pleasing that authorities have taken more drastic action now.
Bulawayo City Council, and eight companies Delta Beverages, Schweppes, Ingwebu Breweries, Colcom, CSC, Treger, Kango and United Refineries were recently named as the biggest offenders. Bulawayo discharges untreated sewage into the River. It must be morally more offensive that even funeral parlours, though not among the eight above, fall in the category of big polluters too.
It is sad that the decision was not taken earlier as it is clear that the discharge of effluent did not start this month. For years, therefore, people in Bulawayo and Umguza have been consuming water and farm produce from Umguza.
There has not been an epidemic of cancers or liver failures yet, because these tend to take time to manifest, but in the next few decades we might face a real crisis. It is better late than never though.
It is laughable, and we have said this before, that the fines that Ema imposes on offenders are too cheap to deter them, only $5,000. With the legal front so weak in deterring pollution, we resorted to moral suasion to discourage culprits. This didn’t work as well.
But we have to say that banning agricultural use of water from Umguza, without enforcing equally radical action on the real causers of the problem is not good enough. What authorities have done in this case is to punish the victim and letting the criminals to continue in their dirty paths.
Ema must forthwith, stop Bulawayo City Council and its fellow contaminators from dirtying that river. Giving them more time to update their treatment systems or for Bulawayo, fixing its sewer lines, is to condone a serious environmental crime.
We don’t have specific figures of deaths arising from contaminated water consumption in Umguza but a recent government Epidemic-Prone Diseases, Deaths and Public Health Events report said 328 people across the country had, by May 18, died from common diarrhoea since the beginning of the year. Apart from the fatalities, the data also shows that at least 190,500 were treated for the disease with children below the age of five being the worst affected. Fifty five of the deaths and 34,967 cases of common diarrhoea were recorded in January alone.
As we let Bulawayo City Council and others to continue contaminating our environment until they comply with standards, we foresee an immediate, obvious death of Umguza’s horticulture sector, its lifeline enterprise given its closeness to Bulawayo, a market of 653,000 people. Many farmers and villagers whose livelihoods depended on it would definitely see their incomes shrink, and livelihoods threatened although their health should improve. Poultry, piggery and beef production should be affected as well as already; we have reports of animals being born with physical deformities.
But the vegetable ban presents an opportunity for farmers in the district to seek alternatives beyond cereals that Ema has told them to focus on instead. Cereals like maize, sorghum and wheat don’t pay that much and a farmer tends to wait longer to reap than when he farms most horticultural produce.
Umguza MP Dr Obert Mpofu and two other farmers have shown that tobacco can be successfully grown in the district. So we foresee a shift, albeit enforced, from horticulture to a growth, in the medium to long term, of tobacco production as well. It is more rewarding anyway.
Online Reporter