Save water catchment areas for posterity, urges authority

The Water Resources Authority has urged stakeholders to better conserve water catchment areas and aquifers for the sake of posterity.

WRA board chairperson David Murgor on Wednesday warned that water may go extinct in the near future due to climate change, creating a big crisis.

“For our future generations, we must start now to ensure that we conserve our catchment areas to combat the severe climate change,” he said.

He was speaking in Garissa when he met water stakeholders from five counties during a validation workshop.

The counties are Garissa, Mandera, Marsabit, Turkana and Wajir.

Also present were WRA chief executive Mohamed Shurie and Garissa Water executive Ahmed Ibrahim.

The workshop aimed to prioritise Sub-Catchment Areas for the implementation of Managed Aquifer Recharge infrastructure, conservation and livelihood activities.

Murgor said access to water is key to everything, including industrialisation and production, saying development cannot be talked about without water.

Around 1.5 million rural residents from the five counties will benefit from the WRA project development objectives.

The objectives are aligned with the United Nations Goal 6, seeking to achieve universal access to safe drinking water by 2030.

“We came to sensitise our people and we want to bring everybody on board,” Murgor said.

He cited the youth, women and people living with disabilities.

“We want to move together in one direction as water is an important resource for the development of our country,” Murgor said.

Previous stakeholder consultation workshops were held in the various counties in January.

Shurie said six exploiter boreholes will be drilled across the five counties to monitor the behaviour and patterns of groundwater.

"The core of our Project Development Objective is clear: to increase sustainable access and management of groundwater in the Horn of Africa borderlands," the WRA chief executive said.

Shurie said there will another borehole at the Indian Ocean.

Once successfully studied and approved, he said, it will bring an end to water shortages in the Coastal region, which has not had fresh supply of water.

Ibrahim said it is important to evaluate how the underground water behaves and to monitor the aquifer recharge.

This will help in planning ahead to conserve water, the Water executive said.

“This project that covers five counties bordering Ethiopia and Somalia will help in evaluating how our underground water is behaving as well as improving our catchment areas,” Ibrahim said.

The country is grappling with water scarcity, a challenge made more pressing by the fact that 83 per cent of its land is classified as arid or semi-arid lands.

The Water Resources Authority aims to provide water for domestic use to 500,000 citizens through sustainable water resource management of groundwater in the Horn of Africa borderlands.