by J Deepti Nandan Reddy, originally posted on April 21, 2016

HYDERABAD: Among the many ironies produced by the current drought across 10 states, by the Centre’s reckoning, is the story of B Manemma. She’s a migrant worker from drought-ravaged Mahbubnagar in Telangana and is engaged in building a water pipeline from Ibrahimpatnam to Hyderabad, where the thirsting middle class is getting restive about a water crisis they have not seen before. Her village is not far from river Krishna, the waters of which are tapped to quench Hyderabad’s thirst.

Bottled Up and How

Take the case of Bhimsha Chitali, who  works as a labourer at Kudalahangara village at Kalaburagi in Karnataka where the temperature has been hovering around 44°C. He is forced to buy packaged drinking water.

Rs 200

Actual earning under MGNREGS, though he is entitled to Rs 234 a day. Also, wages are credited only once a week.

Rs 80

Spent by Bhimsha on buying four litres of packaged drinking water each day because of lack of availability and access to potable water.

Rs 120

Alone left for other necessities.

Rs 2,400

Bhimsha ends up spending each month on bottled water.

Manemma and her husband and their two children buy water every day. “We don’t get drinking water at our work site,” she says. “So we buy canned water and fill it in bottles and bring it to the site. If it’s not enough, we have to buy a few sachets more.” It sets back the family of four, who abandoned their small acre of land and migrated to Ibrahimpatnam on the outskirts of Hyderabad, by about Rs 1,000 a month.

No one is harder hit by the water scarcity across 10 states of India than migrant workers who have to spend a good proportion of their wages on bottled water of whatever quality. In a study of coping costs of accessing water, IIT Madras researchers R K Amit and Subash S found that a low-income family may spend as high as 15 per cent of its income on water. The coping costs for households with no access to piped water were assessed at Rs 658 in a city like Chennai.

In crisis-hit Hyderabad, for instance, a middle-class family of four has to shell out at least Rs 2,000 per month to buy drinking water. The situation is worse on the outskirts and for migrant workers like Manemma. To a migrant dailywager in Hyderabad, the going rate of Rs 400 per day appears like a princely sum. But then work is available at best for ten days a month, and then a good part of the earnings go to buying water. “After the rent, the food and the water, what can we save? We thought we could save, but who knew,” said Chinna Chennaiah, a migrant construction labourer.

The plight of recent migrants is particularly grim. They have no claim to the water supplied by the water utilities. That means they have to buy their water. And the drought being a seller’s market, prices of 20-litre water cans have inched up to Rs 50-70 per can in the droughtscape of India.

The drought has also rid Hyderabad of its niceties. In the past, anyone thirsty could duck into an Irani restaurant and have a free glass of water. But Hyderabad’s famed and dwindling Irani cafes do not offer free water any more if you aren’t ordering a cup of tea. Priced at Rs 13.

Unrelenting Heat Wave

The Meteorological Department on Wednesday issued a warning saying heat wave conditions are likely to prevail in some areas in Telangana and Rayalaseema at least until Friday. It also signalled severe heat wave-like conditions in parts of Odisha, West Bengal and Bihar.

Kuruvai Crop Faces Threat

The impact of the dry conditions in Karnataka is being felt in tail-end areas of Cauvery delta. Underscoring the situation in the upper riparian State, farmers in Nagapattinam district have ruled out the possibility of taking up Kuruvai cultivation this year.

by Ray Gonzales, originally posted on April 20, 2016

Tope Ojo, a civil servant, however, noted that the present state government within its short period in office had tried to bring about improvement in supply of potable water across the state

-by Nan, originally posted on April 19, 2016

Residents of Lokoja in Kogi State have decried the continued shortage of potable water supply in the state capital.

A cross section of the people in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria on Tuesday in Lokoja, said the shortage was having untold hardship on their lives.

Joy Obaje, who lives in Phase 2 Estate, said the situation had worsened that her family had resorted to buying a 20-litre Jerry can of water at N75.

Obaje said: “We used to enjoy regular water supply in this area before, but it has not been the same for some weeks now.”

She, therefore, appealed to the state government to urgently direct the state water board to restore water supply to the people.

Ahmadu Bello said the water shortage had affected his children’s health, saying that he had resorted to finding alternative source of safe drinking water.

Tope Ojo, a civil servant, however, noted that the present state government within its short period in office had tried to bring about improvement in supply of potable water across the state.

Ojo said: “I think the recent water shortage is caused by the current power outage in the state as electricity is needed to power the water treatment plant.

“This new government is really trying to ensure that there is regular water supply and we really appreciate the gesture.”

Bayo Adeyefa, a health worker, however, hinted that irregular potable water supply might result in the outbreak of various communicable diseases.

According to Adeyefa, the consumption of untreated water such as well and river water could lead to water related diseases like cholera, diarrhoea.

He implored the relevant authorities to ensure immediate supply of adequate potable water across the state.

Ramat Salihu, a trader, said the hardship of getting drinking water was ameliorated by the rain that fell on Monday and three days ago in Lokoja.

Saliva said: “We have resorted to drinking well and rain water in my family for some days now, but we thank God for the rain that fell recently.

“We are calling on our new Governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, to ensure that all of us in the state have regular access to safe drinking water.”

However, the General Manager of the State Water Board, Isaac Ogwuche, told NAN that the recent shortage of water supply was occasioned by the frequent power outages and fuel scarcity being experienced in the state.

Ogwuche said: “There is a limit to the volume of water the board can supply when there is no regular power supply or diesel to power the water treatment plants.

“Sometimes, we also experience damaged water valves, which make us to shut down the water from the source.

“Whenever this happens, we shut down the water to avoid wastage and it takes like one or two days to repair it depending on the level of damage.”

Ogwuche, however, noted that water supply has just been restored and appealed to residents to always report any damaged pipes noticed in their areas to the board.

by Laurel Morales, originally posted on April 19, 2016

LaTanya Dickson, her husband and four children live in a 24-by-24, one-room hogan on the Navajo Nation. The home is cozy for six. But there’s still someone missing.

Dickson pulls up a video on her phone of her daughter Lisa, now 18 months, playing with a nurse in Phoenix. This is the closest Dickson has been to her daughter in many days. 

“We missed everything– her first laugh, her first Christmas, her first crawl,” Dickson said.

The family tries to see her once or twice a month. But when they go, Lisa doesn’t recognize them right away.

“We would go to try to touch her hand or try to talk to her and she’ll just look at us and look at one of the nurses that are on duty and start to cry,” Dickson said.

Baby Lisa was born a year and a half ago with microvillus inclusion disease, a rare digestive disorder. She needs a small intestine transplant but the doctors explained Lisa wouldn’t survive the surgery without running water to keep her clean at all times. Her family and many families on the Navajo Nation have to haul their water from many miles away.

“For them to tell you that your daughter has to stay here, she can’t go home, because you don’t have the basic necessities to take care of her, that’s really heartbreaking to me,”
Dickson said.

Dickson and her neighbors drive to a water station about 10 miles away to fill up their plastic barrels. Dickson’s neighbor says this water is only for crops and livestock because it’s not clean. They drive twice the distance and pay 35 cents a gallon for clean drinking water.

A long legacy of uranium mining has made clean groundwater difficult to reach on the Navajo Nation. Between 1944 and 1986, mining companies extracted nearly 4 million tons of uranium from Navajo land. The federal government purchased the ore to make atomic weapons. When the demand was gone, the companies left, abandoning more than 500 mines. The EPA only recently began to clean up the contamination.

“Many people don’t know that and many people don’t realize the debt we owe the Navajo Nation,” said EPA regional administrator Jared Blumenfeld. “A lot of people have spent years suffering really some pretty terrible conditions.” 

Lack of access to clean drinking water is just one example. 

Dickson went to the Navajo Office of Environmental Health to find out how soon they could get clean water. Even though the medical condition is serious, officials tell Dickson it would take two to three years before they would survey the area. And another couple years before the tribe could fund and build the line. 

So Dickson and her husband tried to raise money on their own by raffling off gift cards, jewelry and donated artwork. A friend brought attention to baby Lisa on an Albuquerque TV station. And that’s how the nonprofit DIGDEEP got involved. 

“Baby Lisa unfortunately is not an uncommon story,” said DIGDEEP founder George McGraw. 

His organization is digging wells in many impoverished areas, including the Navajo Nation, where 40-percent of the people lack access to running water. 

“There are about a million children in the U.S. right now that still don’t have safe, clean running water at home,” McGraw said. “There’s a big concentration of those children in the southwest and on the Navajo Nation. If you don’t have running water and sanitation at home it’s really not only impossible to live a ‘normal’ life socially, but it’s also really difficult to just live a healthy life.” 

While Lisa’s condition is genetic, Indian Health Service research shows a strong tie between lack of indoor plumbing and prenatal disease.

DIGDEEP is raising $50,000 to build the water line, and install a bathroom, kitchen sink and septic system, so LaTanya Dickson’s family can be complete, living under one roof.

Like many water utilities facing growing demand and the effects of climate change, the local water company, EMASA, must invest carefully to secure water for its fluctuating customer base.
By investing in “natural infrastructure” such as forests through conservation and restoration, EMASA controls soil erosion and the resulting sediment entering the Camboriú River.
The result is reduced water treatment costs and water losses.
As EMASA’s Environmental Engineer Rafaela Santos says, “This river is the only supply that we have to Camboriú and Balneário Camboriú municipalities, so it’s important that EMASA invests in actions to preserve this resource to last more time and with a better quality”.
Yet, remarkably few credible examples of such business cases exist for watershed conservation.
Applying this ROI framework to the Camboriú watershed conservation program, they found that reductions in sediment treatment cost and water losses offset 80 percent of the water company’s investment in the program over a 30-year time horizon, and all of its investment over time horizons of 43 years or more.
Recognizing these additional benefits provided by the program, the Balneário Camboriú municipality is concluding a review of a new water tariff structure for EMASA that recognizes watershed conservation as a supply measure and would cover the program’s full operational costs.
These findings are typical of the economics of watershed conservation and illustrate the difference between the economic case (ROI of the program overall) and the business case (ROI for specific water users) for watershed conservation.
This ROI framework offers a useful template to any water user evaluating how to secure their water supply.
For EMASA, this journey began with recognizing nature as water infrastructure, to be considered and financed as other water collection and treatment infrastructure.

by Howard Weiss-Tisman, originally posted on April 19, 2016

As the state zeroes in on the extent of the PFOA contamination in North Bennington, there are short and long term challenges to making sure people have clean water to drink.

There are more than 100 homeowners in North Bennington who have new carbon filters on their water systems because their water has elevated levels of PFOA, a suspected carcinogen that state officials say most likely was released from the former Chemfab plant.

The filters remove the PFOA, and provide safe water, but they cut down on the water pressure and are expensive to maintain. So they’re considered a short term fix.

And for the long term, state and local officials hope to extend nearby municipal water lines to the contaminated homes, but that will likely take a year or more to complete.

Wayne Kachmar’s well tested positive for PFOA, and he has one of the new carbon filters on his water system.

Kachmar has small farm in North Bennington. He uses a lot of water, and since the PFOA test came back positive he’s been giving his horses bottled water.

“They drink between 8 and 10 gallons a day each, so between them that’s between 15 to 20 gallons of water a day,” he says. “Right now I’ve been running up to the North Bennington Variety Store. And I’m getting my exercise hefting those 5-gallon bottles. It’s a pain in the neck right now. But we’ll live with it.”

And living with the carbon filter system isn’t going to be easy either. Even though he can’t drink the filtered water yet, Kachmar has been using the water around his house.

And he says there’s been a learning curve.

“One of the issues is it reduces the volume of water significantly,” he says. “The most important thing I learned is I was outside watering the horses at the same time that my wife was upstairs taking a shower. That was not a good combination.”

Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Alyssa Schuren says the carbon filters were installed to address the water contamination in the fastest way possible.

It will likely take a year or more to extend water lines out to the houses with contaminated wells.

Schuren says the next step will be an engineering study to look at how the municipal systems in both Bennington and North Bennington can serve the scattered properties.

“The community deserves a long-term clean water source,” Schuren says. “We know that the municipal source is clean in North Bennington and Bennington, and we would like to make sure those people have long-term access to clean water. That’s going to mean municipal line extension in the long term.”

But that long-term plan is expected to cost between $7 million and $10 million, and no one is ready to commit to that kind of money.

Saint-Gobain ran the Chemfab factory in North Bennington until it closed in 2002, and the company’s  been paying for bottled water, water tests and the carbon filter systems.

The state says that bill will top $4 million, and talks between the two sides to date have been very good.

But Julia DiCorleto, the general manager for foams and tapes at Saint-Gobain, says the company is not ready to write a $10 million check for the water system extension.

“You know, I think it’s early to define what the best long-term solution is,” DiCorleto says. “Right now the investigation is going on. We’re certainly not going anywhere, we’re working closely together and I think we have to map out what those steps are in due time when we learn more.”

And regardless of who pays for it, there will be a number of hurdles to get over before those first drops of clean water reach any of the contaminated properties.

There’s plenty of capacity in the Bennington system, but the North Bennington system is much smaller and it’s not clear just how far that water system can be pushed.

There will also likely be secluded homes that are simply out of reach of either system.

The state will have to work with those homeowners to come up with solutions, which could include more robust – and expensive – filtration systems, or digging deeper wells.

And then there’s the challenge of selling the idea to people such as Ed Loveland, who has a well, and who’s lived a long time without paying water bills.

Loveland’s not sure about hooking on to the municipal system. He’s 77, and he says the PFOA hasn’t killed him yet and he likes his water just fine.

“[My] wife won’t hook on unless it’s mandatory because she don’t like the water,” Loveland says. “If this water right now tastes as good as the water that’s in that cooler, I wouldn’t hook on the North Bennington water anyhow.”

And that could pose a problem for the other water users who will have to support the system, regardless of who ultimately pays to lay the new pipe.

Bennington town manager Stuart Hurd says there are likely other independent Vermonters living off a private well who might be less than excited to pay for municipally-treated water.

In most urban and suburban communities, hooking on to the water system is not an option.

Hurd says rural Vermont is another story.

“Here in Vermont, we haven’t forced people to sign on to the water system,” Hurd says. “That’s one of the issues I think the select  board has to think about when we start, when we prepare to do this. We have to understand what the willingness is of the people who are out there. I mean, people who have a good well may not want to connect.”

In the meantime, another 30 carbon filters are being installed in the next week or so.

And the state is still testing wells – and waiting on the last round of water tests – to see if there are even more contaminated homes to serve.

by Abdul Rashid Thomas, originally posted on April 18, 2016

Dear Mr President,

This water crisis in the city has exceeded its elastic limit. Every nook and cranny of Freetown is filled with the weeping and wailing of citizens, because of the shortage of water.

Who else needs to be told that our women and children are at the brunt of this crisis.

Do you know what is water-for-water? This I am made to understand is the new practice of young girls selling their bodies, just to have a Jerry can filled with the indispensable God given water.

It is believed that men managing the water collection points are receiving sex from girls desperate to fetch water.

Maybe only statistics Sierra Leone can do a survey on the number of children that have lost their chastity or impregnated through this practice, just in the name of water supply, which your government is yet to provide for the city.

Quite apart from this, another popular slang on the lips of water victims is “game in hand”.  This is borne out of the fact that people go without showering for several days. If you don’t know about this sir, we will let you know how hard this water exigency is hitting us.

Children believed to be of school going age are seen round the clock in long queues, waiting to collect a few drops of water.  Some spend their school time at the water collection points instead of attending school.

What is more frustrating is the third slang “overtaking”.  This is a strategy that combines paying more money or W4W (sex) to get priority to collect water ahead of those that have spent more time in the queue.

All these ugly developments are happening in Freetown today, because your government has done little to meet Goal 6 of The UN sustainable development goals – ‘ensure access to affordable water and sanitation for all’.

On March 22, Sierra Leone took part in the annual World Water Day Celebration, which focuses attention on the importance of access to clean, safe water, and advocates for the sustainable management of water resources.

How much has your government done towards achieving this goal?  Provision of safe, drinking water for the people is a Human Right, as well as ensuring prosperity for all, as part of the new sustainable development agenda.

Mr President,  I acknowledge the fact that there is Guma Valley Water Company, SALWACO and Ministry of Water Resources. But what have they all done to provide water,  regulate and manage this resource?

Moreover, are we to believe that your government is culpable, because of lack of interest, or poor due diligence?

It is true that children die in Sierra Leone from diseases associated with inadequate water supply, poor sanitation and poor hygiene.

In Sierra Leone today, water scarcity and poor water quality have led to the proliferation of private water companies that are selling water in sachets.  I heard that 82 of these companies do not meet the quality standard. But their products are still on the market.

Sierra Leonean women and children are crying aloud. They need improved access to clean water supply.  I believe western area with slightly above Two million people, is not too high a population, for which you cannot provide adequate water supply.

Mr.  President, I want to contribute to the sustainable future of our country. This is why I am letting people know that it’s your government’s responsibility to provide clean drinking water.

It’s good governance, when a president responds to and addresses the social needs of the people.

Mr. President, it is true that you alone cannot do the job. But how much space have you created for the private sector and civil society involvement?

To conclude,  Pillar Two of your Agenda For Prosperity ( Managing Natural Resources), spells out clearly that Sierra Leone has nine major river systems, viz: Rokel,  Seli, Pampana, Jong, Sewa, Wanje, Great Scarces, Little Scarces and Moa.

Why can’t these be developed to supply clean, safe drinking water?

It is understood that Sierra Leone is rich in water resources to the amount of 160 km3 run off from those nine river basins.

Added to these rivers, what about the Thunder Hill Dam,  the Orugu Dam, the Bankasoka?

Mr President, are these not supplementing Guma Dam?  What is happening to these dams?

I will end with these questions and the people need answers:

Have you developed a comprehensive plan for the integrated management and efficient use of our water resources?

How much local participation have you promoted in the management of water resources?

How many technical and skilled operatives have you provided, for the management of our water resources at various levels?

Have you put in place appropriate legal and regulatory framework?

How many institutions have you strengthened or created to manage the water supply in the country?

originally posted on April 18, 2016

WUKRO: With Ethiopia in the grip of its worst drought in decades, the government has appealed for aid to help the 100 million people living in Africa’s second most-populous nation.

But in the town of Wukro, surrounded by the rocky, arid mountains of the northern Tigray region, the government is investing in longer-term efforts to ensure a supply of fresh water that will go far beyond the immediate needs of aid.

With a mushrooming urban population expected to soar from 70 million today to 100 million by 2050, water needs are all set to grow. In a bid to anticipate this future need, the government is stepping up construction of wells to pump ground water in a project backed by both the United Nations and charities.

“Lack of water affects everything: food, health, education and children’s futures,” warned the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which is working with the government to boost access to clean water and health in new, rapidly-growing towns.

“Urbanisation must be accompanied by access to water and improved hygiene,” said Tamene Gossa, an urban hygiene expert with UNICEF, warning that without it new districts risked becoming slums.

For Wukro, a town of around 43,000 people, new wells have been dug 18 kilometres away to tap into major groundwater supplies. Late last year, clean water emerged from a well 650 feet deep which now supplies the town.

“We supply 50 litres per day, per person, which means the population in Wukro is now… safe,” said Tesfalem Hagdu, Deputy Director of water resources for the Tigray region.

Floods and failed rains caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon have sparked a dramatic rise in the number of people going hungry in large parts of Africa, with southern Ethiopia an area of special concern.

Food insecurity is a sensitive issue in Ethiopia which has struggled to change its image, following the famine of 1984-85 after an extreme drought.

While northern Tigray has escaped the worst of today’s El Nino drought, it has still seen water shortages, and the area around Wukro is dry and dusty.

But there have been huge efforts to change the situation, with authorities planting acacia and eucalyptus tree seedlings in a bid to limit erosion, to help water infiltrate the soil and feed underground springs.

Water experts hope to be able to supply water to a wider region within the next two decades.

“The water coverage for 2035 will be 100 percent — not only for Wukro, but for five other villages around,” says Abdul Wassie, Technical Chief of the region’s water resources.

But the city has also gone further with hygiene-related programmes to increase awareness about sanitation issues.

Two years ago, a primary school in the town created a water and sanitation club to promote basic hygiene.

In a remote town like Wukro, where health services are limited, basic tasks such as washing hands regularly can make a big difference to cutting overall sickness.
“Before this programme, viruses spread as well as parasitic diseases,” said water club leader Selamawit Tamerat. “Since then, everything changed and sickness decreased,” Selamawit added, praising the educational impact the project has had on the wider community.

by Josephine Marcotty, originally posted on April 16, 2016

Nearly a decade ago, eight governors shook hands on an extraordinary agreement to erect a legal wall around the largest source of fresh water on earth — the Great Lakes.

The unusual bipartisan compact, signed by the heads of the states that border the massive basin, aimed to keep the increasingly valuable water right where it is for the 40 million people who rely on it for their jobs, their homes and their vacations.

Now they face the first test.

Waukesha, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee, has asked for the right to pull drinking water from Lake Michigan. In coming weeks or months the current eight governors, including Gov. Mark Dayton, will have to make a critical decision on how to share — or not — one fifth of the world’s fresh water. The question arises against a backdrop of increasing national conflicts over water and growing concerns about the way pollution and climate change are threatening the world’s water supply.

Yet the eight governors, none of whom were in office when the compact was signed, will also have to live with the precedent they establish. Some of their own communities may someday face the same water problems that Waukesha has now — declining and increasingly contaminated supplies. Minnesota, for one, has a dozen communities with water problems that are close enough to Lake Superior to ask for an exemption under the compact.

“The real reason many of us care is not because of that one straw into the Great Lakes,” said Molly Flanagan, vice president of policy for the Great Lakes Alliance, a nonprofit that’s advocated for the compact since its inception. “If we don’t set a strong precedent, it could be too easy for other cities to stick a straw into the Great Lakes.”

The first critical meeting is April 22 in Chicago, home of the Conference of Great Lakes Governors, with representatives from each state.

Dayton’s representative, Julie Ekman, declined to say which way Minnesota is leaning. “We will be discussing what each party feels about the proposal,” said Ekman, a manager with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “Can it be approved, can conditions be added or is it a nonstarter?”

The final vote is expected May 23. And it has to be unanimous — a single no vote will torpedo Waukesha’s request.

Regional competitiveness

The compact is a historic, and rare, regulatory framework. Unlike the divisive water-sharing laws for the Colorado River and others in the west, the Great Lakes compact includes language that emphasizes sustainability, transparency, conservation and efficiency.

“The compact is more about governing the resource collectively as a common pool for the public domain,” said Jenny Kehl, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, who studies water resource issues.

But its most important provision, and a key reason why eight governors, eight legislatures, Congress and the president of the United States approved it, is a ban on siphoning water outside the basin.

In short, there can be no Keystone Pipeline for water to the parched agricultural lands of California.

“A big part of our competitive advantage is that we have all this water,” said Flanagan. “Exporting it would be exporting the jobs and economic benefits of having that great resource in our region”

For now, the only communities allowed to use the water are those inside the Great Lakes Basin watershed itself — Chicago, Duluth, Milwaukee are some of the big ones. And the water they use must be cleaned up and returned to the watershed.

The compact, however, gives the governors the power to make some limited exceptions for cities and counties that are part inside and part outside the watershed — so called “straddling” communities. In the wide suburban rings that surround big Midwestern cities such as Milwaukee, there are many. Even in Minnesota, where the Lake Superior watershed extends a short way inland from North Shore and up to the Iron Range, 76 towns fit the definition — 11 of them with water supplies that are even now vulnerable to contamination.

The bar they would have to meet is extremely high: Communities must show an urgent need and no other reasonable alternative.

Growth grab?

Waukesha, a well-to-do suburb west of Milwaukee, is the first that sits entirely outside the Great Lakes watershed to ask.

The city’s drinking water is contaminated with radium, a naturally occurring pollutant that can cause cancer. In addition, its water comes from deep aquifers that are running dry, and the city is under court order to find another source.

After more than a decade of analysis and reviewing many alternatives, both the city and the state concluded that Lake Michigan is the town’s only reasonable option, and that it fits the requirements of the compact.

The chorus of outraged disagreement, however, has been deafening.

“Waukesha simply assumes that its proposal to seize water from Lake Michigan will solve problems it could have more inexpensively and simply solved without drastic resort to the use of Lake Michigan water,” wrote 100 members of the Great Lakes Legislative Caucus, including many legislators from Minnesota.

The city of Milwaukee had offered to sell its neighbor the water it needed, until Wisconsin state officials required Waukesha to expand its water supply service territory to match its sanitary sewer system — part of the state’s long-range water planning. As a result, the city upped its potential water use from 6 million to 10 million gallons per day.

“We are concerned that Waukesha grossly overestimates its future water needs by expanding its service area to include communities that have neither requested nor need water service,” said members of the Milwaukee City Council.

Many critics say the water is nothing more than fuel for the city’s ambitious economic growth plans.

“These people are developers,” said Sandy Hamm, a lifelong resident of the area and an outspoken critic of the diversion plan. “There’s no other reason to want that much water.”

Dan Duchniak, Waukesha’s city water utility manager, said the increase in supply and service areas is required to comply with state law, and the potential for industrial expansion is just 15 percent. But that’s been a hard case to make, he said.

“Our opponents’ message is easy — ‘Save the Great Lakes,’ ” he said. Our message is ‘Give Waukesha Water.’ It doesn’t go down real well.”

Besides, he warned, Waukesha’s Plan B would mean drawing down other local aquifers that will have a major impact on wetlands. “And we will be back at this table 20 years down the road and we will be requesting Great Lakes water again,” he said.

Proving the compact?

Duchniak argues that granting the city’s request will actually prove that the compact works, and could avert court challenges in the future. Even if other cities do follow Waukesha’s lead, at most it means the wall around the Great Lakes Basin would extend to the outer edge of the counties that surround it.

“The water will not go beyond that,” he said.

Flanagan, from the Great Lakes Alliance, sees it differently.

“You cannot draw an arbitrary line around the counties” and expect it will stand up to court challenges, she said. The high bar outlined in the compact is there for a reason, she said: To create a legally defensible standard rooted in preserving the lakes.

Otherwise, she said, “How do you close the door?”

by Johnson Kanamugire, originally posted on April 16, 2016

Residents of Kigali suburbs have expressed concern over the high cost of rainwater harvesting tanks. The market is dominated by two manufacturers, namely RotoTank and Afritank.

Going by market prices, a household will need between Rwf410,000 and Rwf810,000 to buy the 5,000 and 10,000 litre water tanks. There is no provision for hire purchase.

However, residents of Kigali districts and those of Nyabihu and Rubavu benefit from the loan scheme that reduces the cost to between Rwf390,000 and Rwf775,000, payable in 12-monthly installments.

On the other hand, the building of underground water tanks is getting increasingly expensive mainly due to the lack of space required and the cost of pumps and electricity to pump the collected water.

Like the residents, manufacturers and retailers of the water tanks argue that unless there is government intervention to lower the production cost, the current high prices could become increasingly unaffordable to many who need the tanks.

This means low-income earners in high rainfall zones could continue to lose opportunities to harvest rainwater that is much needed in the dry season.

Last week, Celestin Munyandida a resident of Jali sector visited a neighbour in Gatsata shortly after a series of heavy rains had destroyed residential houses, leaving many others on the brink of collapse.

Here, water, which is usually scarce with a jerrican going for as much as Rwf350, came not as a blessing but a curse.

“Unlike in the rural areas, houses here are very connected, and not a single one harvests rainwater. So every time it rains heavily waters collects on the roofs and eventually some collapse and the houses flood, said Mr Munyandida.

Two people died in the area after the roof of their house caved in on them and 10 other people died under different conditions during the same rains, with 19 suffering injuries in other parts of country.

Blessed with average precipitation estimated at 1,400mm per year, translating into multi-million cubic metres of water every year, Rwanda could become one of the continent’s water rich nations.

However, it remains a water scarce country, having only a quarter of Africa’s average per capita water availability and storage volume.

Lack of appropriate rainwater harvesting has left all the rain falling in the country to go to waste as run-off, leaving many parts of the country exposed to water shortages and with rainwater-related hazards namely floods, soil erosion and others.

Available figures show that the country only uses less than two per cent of its available water resources, with the rest lost as run-off. This, according to experts, means a continuous wastage of the country’s resource at the expense of thousands in dire need of water for irrigation as well as domestic and industrial use.

The government however argues that this is a problem being worked on, citing recently-approved National Water Master plan as paving the way for computing and effective management of all the available water resources both on the surface and underground.

“We are finalising designs for multi-purpose dams that will capture waters to be used for irrigation and hydro power purposes. We have also introduced in the building code a requirement that all the houses be equipped with a rainwater harvesting facility,” said Dr Emmanuel Nkurunziza, Rwanda Natural Resources Authority head.

“The rest is enforcement which is to be done by Rwanda Housing Authority and districts,” he added.

Currently, only few building with big roofing area in town are equipped with rain water harvesting tanks while private houses and majority of residential houses in Kigali city are yet to install them.

The situation has remained unchanged even after the Ministry for Natural Resources put up a combination of incentives and a loan scheme to facilitate communities most hit by rains to get financial support in the use of rainwater harvesting systems.