BY DICKENS WASONGA
It is official. Kisumu, the third-largest city in Kenya has been operating without an official garbage dumping site.
This admition made by the city’s town clerk Mr Rashid Mwakiwiwi confirms claims by environmentalists that the local authority was a major contributor to environmental degradation.
The council as been collecting garbage which it off-loads near the Moi stadium according to the clerk who was recently posted to the lake side city.
The chief officer admitted that the temporary dumping ground was not the ideal site for the waste but the council has been forced to continue to use it for now because of lack of an option.
Initially the council had identified a plot at the Mamboleo area which it intended to use as a dumping ground but the national environmental management authority NEMA objected the move saying it was close to an estate and would affect those who reside their.
The clerk now say that lack of the site was a real concern which they were putting every effort to address.
He said a resolution was recently passed by the council that a plot be bought from any private land owner which will eventually be transformed into a dump site.
The council was also planning to buy a council truck for garbage collection in the next financial year. The existing truck, according to the clerk was old and was not economical to repair any more.
Mr. Mwakiwiwi also noted that by-laws which the council have been approving to help in coordinating environmental issues was still awaiting approval by the ministry of local government to become endorsable laws.
He admitted that lack of these laws or failure to implement them have allowed those who pollute the environment to escape the law.
” We have been passing by laws but we still lack the teeth to bite. I must agree that enforcement has been a problem her.” he said.
So for the residents, they must remain patient with the hope that the city fathers will do something to ensure the town is clean again.
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Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:26:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dickens Wasonga
Subject: KISUMU YET TO GET A DUMP SITE-TOWN CLERK.
Open Letter To Kisumu Municipal Council Town Clerk
Dear Sir,
I have read the above posting and would like to pose a short synopsis for you to seriously consider before you go buy a plot of land and heap a bunch of Municipal Solid Waste on.
1. The Lake Victoria water table is not that deep underneath any surface land that the council may be able to acquire in the Kisumu and Nyando areas or even places as far spread out as Yimbo, Seme, and most of the parts of South Nyanza that border the lake. Subsequently, any municipal solid waste dumped on the surface land in these palces is bound to, over time, degrade and produce what is called in Environmental Engineering circles “Leachates”. Leachates are the liquid non biodegradable remnants of organic additives that were either introduced into the original product before it was put into the market, or were produced as a consequence of the manufacturing process in the quest to make it a sellable product that had targeted market end-use. Unfortunately, without good engineering practices going into the design of landfills or dumps, these non biodegradable organics seep into the ground, are entrained into the undergound cappillaries of water, and eventually end up in the downstream terminal points, in this case Lake Victoria.
I would urge you to engage the services of an environmental consultant to engineer a landfill for Kisumu municipality. The advantages of a landfill is you will be able to contain the leachates in a well engineered landfill, and as long as it is a landfill, you will be able to reclaim some of the byproducts of anaerobic activities, aka Methane gas. What you do with the methane is up to you but it is a natural byproduct of the process.
My two cents worth.