Raw Sewer Streams – An Unwanted Legacy of Zimbabwean Cities’ Unplanned Growth

By Patrick Zuva,

Imagine stepping out of your house, through your kitchen door, and having to jump over a sewer stream that is running through your yard. Not just some sewer stream, this is the most fowl smelling, unsightly, disgusting filth imaginable. It is raw sewerage.

Think about this too; you have a small family that includes two toddlers.  You have recently had to fashion a narrow canal to help the shit stream run faster and not form a small dam in your yard. We all know how the little ones love water, especially water that flows.

Those who leave in Chitungwiza, some parts of Harare, and indeed many of our cities, will probably not have to imagine this. Chances are you have or are living through this nightmare.

If something in your house or yard is going to smell, it had better smell good, like your loved one’s perfume, or their cooking, and not some filth flowing through your well-tended yard. A sewer burst right in your street, or your yard, is a nightmare that no one should have to live through. We are not going to start with its massive implications on public health.

It is bad, very bad. Yet everyday people in Zimbabwe’s suffering cities have had to live through it.

Reasons for sewer bursts are many and varied. The biggest one however is that the sewer systems have been overloaded. They have to carry more waste than they can manage. People are not necessarily eating more. If anything, they seem to have lesser means to eat more, if the tanking economy is a viable cause.

Put simply, more and more people are being connected to the sewer ‘grid’ without any corresponding effort to improve or expand its capacity.

Zesa has a solution to their own incapacity to power the nation; they load shed. Local councils cannot do this, even though they would welcome such ‘relief’. They cannot tell people to eat less. I am going to stop with this now.

Our sewer systems need urgent attention. They need regular maintenance and upgrading to help them better cope with the ‘added responsibility’. Gosh, this is a difficult subject to write on.  Local councils have been selling more and more land for residential stands but have curiously not realised that the infrastructure that supports such expansion also needs expanding.

 Cry Chitungwiza cry.

Our open spaces, those few deemed ‘unsuitable’ for residential settlement, of which there are not many left, are as green as can be. They receive regular watering. Looking at them, you would think we are on the Equator where it rains all the time. They are lush green, with streams that run all year round.

Only these streams should not be mistaken for those of the genuine ‘miracle’ liquid that gives life, because on close inspection, the stuff that runs in these streams is of a very different colour and smell to water. [tweet this].It is sewerage, raw sewerage.

To think I am trying to eat as I write this!             

 

Question, big question! Where do these sewer streams run?

The answer to this uncomfortable question is, ‘to the rivers that run through or closest to our cities’. Another is, ‘into the dams from which the water that local authorities sell us is pumped’.

 Do I hear cries of ‘the water is treated first’ from our town authorities?

The colour and smell I sometimes get in the water that my tap coughs up, in the three days of the week that my local authority decided I should get water, tells me the water is anything but treated. It is very dirty water. My wife would be subjecting our young family to some serious health problems if she did not insist on boiling this water first.

Some residents, for their undiminishing resourcefulness, have, reasoning in the same way they discovered that gas, being renewable, is cheaper, cleaner and friendlier on the environment than paraffin and charcoal, decided to sink water wells on their properties.

Queuing up for water at the few NGO donated boreholes for up to six hours of each day meant gathering water now consumed the greater part of their time, leaving nothing for the actual hustle that is supposed to put food on the table.

However, because most of the ground water is now heavily contaminated from the frequent sewer bursts, most of this water is unsafe for household use. At best, some of it is only good enough for the toilet. Flushing the toilet that is, so the whole smelly cycle can begin again.

How about the much-neglected aqua life, the condition of the fauna that dwells in our water sources? Anyone who brings this subject up would probably be dismissed as a nuisance, for there are seemingly more serious issues to worry about.

May any active environmentalist out there raise their hand? Do we still have any these?

Lush algae is clogging our dams, threatening their capacity to hold enough water. Algal blooms are also compromising the quality of our drinking water and forcing hefty water treatmet bills on urban councils. It is going to take a great effort to clean up Lake Chivero and other dams. [tweet this].Urban dams are literally being taken over by this invasive aqua menace.

                                                                                            water pollution.

The toxicity caused by untreated sewer flowing into our city dams has reached alarming levels. Are our cities now in the business of growing algae? If so, why do we seem to grow even poorer, when we are producing so much of the stuff?

The fish populations in our dams are also dropping sharply. Overfishing may be one of the reasons, but we all could leave comfortably with that. The sad truth is that the fish are choking and dying from all the poisoning caused by the raw sewer effluent that flow into our dams and rivers. Most of our dams have now become environmental disasters, unable to support life within and outside of them.

Raw sewer bursts are choking our neighbourhoods, exposing residents to very serious health hazards. Could any good use be made of this smelly menace? Or is it smelly ‘resource’?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the enterprising folks in our cities, for no choice of their own but for the bad economy, have not let this resource waste away. You have probably noticed that seedling nurseries now adorn every other open space in Chitungwiza, especially those through which these sewer streams run. These soils have become super fertile; just about any crop can thrive in them.

I take time to salute the irrepressible spirit of our people, who refuse to let the difficult economy keep them down. We seem to find opportunity in the most unlikely of places.

The hardworking people running these nurseries have, wisely realised that trying to sell vegetables grown in these ‘fertile’ soils, using the nitrogen rich ‘water’ that run so abundantly through them would result in their produce being rejected by the neighbourhood folk.

But then again, you would only reject these vegetables if you knew where and with what water they were grown. Yikes!

Instead, these reluctant farmers have chosen to grow seedlings that people buy to plant elsewhere, where they hopefully, will be watered with much cleaner water. Business has been brisk. In fact, I hear some have struggled to fill orders. They are now even producing seedlings for farmers out there in the ‘normal’ traditional farms. A complete role reversal.

I, again, salute these ‘urban’ farmers. Their toil and industry has served us all, in many ways. They are not only doing good, honest work to feed their families, but are also  helping to clean our environment and adding a lot of green scenery to our neighbourhoods while also helping improve food security in our people. I say these are our own champions of the green movement; they do not get enough credit, if any.

It is funny though; that there is some clause in our council by laws that actually criminalises ‘stream bank cultivation’. Years ago, councils would go around slashing down thriving maize crops in a futile effort to discourage ‘urban agriculture’ Should councils' inaction now be seen as tacit approval of this ‘illegal’ activity or simply as an admission that the by-law is one of the many whose usefulness has now been overwhelmed by current realities? [tweet this].

There are probably even greener ways we can put this unwanted resource to, dare I say, commercial use. In China, Beijing to be particular, they have taken recycling to much greener heights. In Beijing, they are now using household waste, and yes, they are also using human excrement or 'fecal sludge', to produce rich fertilizer and bio gas that help run the power plants that light up this large city. [tweet this].

For all our ‘Look East’ cries, you would think we would be asking the Chinese to collaborate with us for similar projects in our cities. God knows our cities are overflowing and even choking from the raw material. It is not as if we have not a need for the electricity either. Our industries are collapsing for the lack of it.

I am positive the Chinese would only be too happy to partner us for such projects. What other business creates much needed employment while providing green energy, saving our environment while also helping to protect the good health of our people?

All of this from waste?

We have too much waste that is being wasted.

Instead of extending our begging bowls and asking the Chinese or anyone else for that matter, to fill them with money, why not ask them for ideas and partnerships for initiatives such as these? Our long-suffering people, the environment and indeed future generations will thank us for it.

I for one do not ask for a local authority that does the right thing all the time. I simply ask for one that is always trying to make things better, looking for ways to improve its residents' quality of life, one that listens and talks to its residents. Granted, the Chinese are not known for talking and listening to their people. But you have to love what they have done with their country.

For all their successes, the authorities in Beijing have not got everything right. Air pollution is a very big problem there, an effect of rapid industrialisation, some may say. They have made mistakes, but it is clear they have made lesser bad decisions. Their ‘miracle’ economic growth is testimony to this. They have clearly done something right. Beijing, Guangzhou and other Chinese cities are much larger, and should be more difficult to run than little Harare.

Why do we make this look so damn difficult and fail so miserably, where others have succeeded?

What has been more remarkable about the Chinese' journey towards rapid economic growth is their sheer will and determination. They have realised that real progress is painful, that it entails making a lot of selfless decisions and that certain comforts will have to be given up. They have also even realised that certain people’s careers and businesses will have to be sacrificed along this journey. They have been wise to the fact that all this is necessary if real progress is to be made.

I do not see that selfless determination here.

I, like many out there, simply want a city authority that tries to make people’s lives better, one that acknowledges that their primary job is to serve the residents and not themselves. There are residents before there are councils, without residents there simply would not be any need for a council.

To Better Cities...

As always, this and all other posts on this blog are aimed at provoking discussion on matters that affect our cities. I hope, through this blog, that we can suggest, encourage and inform ideas that can lead to the sustainable growth of our cities. Sign up to this blog and get posts like this one delivered straight to your inbox. Do not forget to follow CivicVoices on Twitter and Facebook and join our growing forums as we discuss the issues that affect our cities. Join me, on the comments section for a further dissection of this topic.