February 13, 2006
By David Ohito
East Standard
There is growing alarm over the quickly receding water levels of Lake Victoria.
A new report accuses Uganda of secretly draining the lake to keep the lights on and fears that it spells an impending environmental and economic disaster to the East Africa region.
Photo: Dr Stephen Njoka, the Lake Victoria Environment Management Project co-ordinator, shows East African Community Secretary, Amanya Mushega, the receding water levels on Lake Victoria.
The report claims that Uganda is flouting a 50-year-old international agreement designed to protect the lake’s waters. The rapidly falling water levels threaten the Sh7 billion fish export, to Europe.
The US-based International Rivers Network released a study accusing Uganda of secretly draining water from the lake to sustain its electricity grids amidst a regional drought.
According to the report, which Ugandan officials have denied, more than half of the drop in Lake Victoria’s levels in 2004 and 2005 can be attributed to a World Bank-funded hydroelectric project at the Owen Falls Dam in Uganda.
Nearly three per cent, (75 cubic kilometers) of water of the lake’s total volume has been lost in the past three years, it said.
The secretary-general of the East African Community, Amanya Meshega, said delegates would meet next month in Tanzania to discuss the situation and try to come up with solutions to reverse the trend.
HYDROELECTRIC RESERVOIR
Covering 69,000 square kilometres, Lake Victoria is shared between Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. Kenya has six per cent of the lake under its territory while Uganda and Tanzania share the rest.
An estimated 30 million people depend on the lake for their livelihoods. The waters have been receding since 2003, leaving international ferries stranded far from their jetties, fishing boats mired in mud, and towns running low on water.
Three major ports on the lake are threatened with closure. Capacity load on the Mbita ferry services between Luanda Kotieno and Mbita has been reduced by up to 40 per cent.
Mr Vitalis Leo, marine superintendent, said: "We are left with no option and if the trend continues, we will be forced to close the port to guarantee the safety of users and vessels," he said.
"In some points, the water levels have reduced by 10 feet making the docking of vessels difficult … the number of locomotives have also come down from 10 to seven," Leo said
"The lake is receding uniformly, in Mwanza, Port Bell and Kisumu. The reduction has reached an average of two-and-a-half metres."
An article in the New Scientist says the only outlet for Lake Victoria, which is ringed by mountains, is at Jinja in Uganda, where it forms the Victoria Nile. Until 1954, the lake emptied into the Nile over a natural rock weir, but that year British colonial engineers blasted out the weir and replaced it with the Owens Falls Dam, now renamed the Nalubaale Dam, which effectively transformed the lake into a giant hydroelectric reservoir.
At the time, engineers agreed that the amount of water flowing through the dam’s turbines should mimic the old natural flow over the weir.
The formula - known as the "agreed curve" - set a maximum flow of between 300 and 1,700 cubic metres per second, depending on the water level in the lake. The agreed curve remains in force today under a treaty with Egypt, the ultimate user of most of the Nile’s water.
AGREED CURVE
In 2002, Uganda finished building a second hydropower complex close to the first one. Soon after its completion, people began to notice the water level falling, and today the lake is at an 80-year low.
In recent weeks, the operator of the two dams, the Uganda Electricity Generating Company, has blamed disruption of electricity supplies on low lake levels, ostensibly caused by the 10 to 15 per cent decline in rainfall across the lake’s catchment area during the past two years. However, it now seems that the dams themselves are as much to blame as the recent drought.
Daniel Kull, a hydrologist with the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction in Nairobi, calculates that if the dams had been operated according to the agreed curve during the past two years, the drought would have caused only half the water loss actually seen.
"Today’s lake levels would be around 45cm higher," he writes in the report released by the California-based environmental lobby group, International Rivers Network.
Kull estimates that in the past two years, the Ugandan dams have released water at an average of almost 1,250 cubic metres per second. About 55 per cent more than the flow permitted for the relevant water levels.
While Uganda does not routinely publish figures on the dams’ operations, Kull says official reports show that releases were nearly twice the permitted rates in both March and November 2005.
Ugandan authorities dismissed Kull’s conclusions and blamed the drought in the region for the lake’s low water levels.
"The impact of prolonged drought has been severe. All the lakes in the region have had declining water levels in spite of the fact that Kiira Dam is not connected to them," said Karisa Kabagambe, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Environment.
Kabagambe said the falling water levels are the result of a 10 per cent to 15 per cent decline in rainfall across the lake’s catchment areas during the past two years.
QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF FISH AFFECTED
Fishing is threatened as breeding grounds dry up and get exposed while landing jetties have been rendered unusable forcing fishers to land they catches in unhygienic conditions.
A deputy director of Kenya Marine and Fisheries (Kemfri) Dr Enoch Wakwabi said the quality and quantity of fish has been affected and reduced catches will be recorded.
"The water quality is wanting due to silting and landing of fish has been diverted compromising the high hygiene standards export fish requires," Wakwabi said at Dunga Beach on Sunday.
Lake Victoria environmental management project coordinator, Dr Stephen Njoka, said the main causes of recession were declining rainfall, evaporation and extraction of water from the Nile.
"Trade is becoming more expensive and it is affecting the livelihoods of the people in the riparian states. We will make recommendations to the council of ministers of the EAC."
The impact of the receding water coupled with strong waves in the morning has occasioned a water shortage in Kisumu and adjacent towns.
"We have a capacity of 18,000 cubic metres everyday, but due to the recession we manage only 16,000 daily," Mr Itiko Mulwa of Kisumu Water and Sewerage Company says.
The low water levels have begun to affect the country’s electricity supply. Uganda’s capital, Kampala, has experienced unprecedented power cuts recently. The country has resorted to severe power rationing, with some areas having electricity for less than five hours in a day.
Ugandan industrialists have predicted hard times ahead, saying escalation in operation costs will force them to shut down, costing thousands of jobs.
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